Flip-flop over Ankit Fadia as 'Digital India' ambassador

NEW DELHI: The government on Tuesday said that it did appoint Ankit Fadia and three others as brand ambassadors for the Digital India, hours after issuing a statement to the contrary. The flip-flop on part of the Ravi Shankar Prasad-led ministry of communications and information technology came just a week after it was forced to withdraw the draft national encryption policy amid public uproar.

In the wake of the controversy over the credentials of Fadia, who describes himself as an ethical hacker, the ministry issued a statement in the morning through the Press information Bureau saying that no brand ambassadors had been appointed.

However, the ministry revoked this statement within hours. It issued another statement later in the day, clarifying that as part of the Digital India week celebrated in July, four brand ambassadors had been nominated for a period of one year "to propagate the product and applications being launched by the department under Digital India Programme".

Besides Fadia, the ministry had appointed IIT entrance exam toppers Satwat Jagwani and Krati Tiwari, and Pranav Mistry of Samsung USA, who is also a computer scientist and author of 6th Sense, as brand ambassadors.