NEW DELHI: India has banned 54 Chinese apps over privacy, security and espionage concerns, saying that they were clones of previously taken down applications that obtained critical permissions to collect sensitive user data.As many as 267 apps were earlier blocked in 2020, citing privacy and security threats amid border tensions between India and China. Ravi Shankar Prasad, the then electronics and information technology minister, called the bans a “digital strike against China.”The 54 apps misused and transmitted real-time data to servers located in a hostile country, the electronics and information technology ministry said in a statement.“This will enable them to...