Noida, April 24 (IANS) If you are not a resident of Noida”s Gaur City and want to enter it, you may need to open your phone”s Google play or the App Store. For entering the society without the government”s Aarogya Setu app is banned, unless you furnish a no-Covid certificate.

“On Friday I went to buy medicine for my aged parents, in a store at the shopping arcade at Gaur Grandeur, situated at sector 119, Noida. The guards wouldn”t let me enter unless I show them that I have downloaded the application or a certificate that says I don”t have COVID-19,” Altaf Qadri told IANS. Qadri has posted a video showing the guards stopping him from entering without either the app or the certificate.

In the video that has ever since been watched over 45,000 times, the security executive is seen selling him: “Sir, look, we work on the instructions we get.” Asked about who issues the instructions to mandatorily download the app or furnish a certificate, the security executive said it is the Residents Welfare Association (RWA) concerned.

Qadri claims he went to buy medicinA for his “aged parents”. When asked about his reservations, he argued, “Downloading the Apps is not made mandatory”.A

Aarogya Set is a Covid-19 contact tracing App that the government as well as the ruling BJP encourages people to download so as to know whether anybody has been in proximity to a COVID positive patient. It uses location data to track individuals and those they have come into contact with. The contacts are notified if an individual is found to be infected with the virus. Though already it has seen 50 million plus downloads, it has not been made mandatory to do so, yet. And here lies the objection of Qadri and many like him who have been stopped at the gate of the Noida skyscraper.

“I haven”t lodged any official complaint but this is not done,” he says.

When the Confederation of NCR Residents Welfare Association (CONRWA), an umbrella body of the RWAs of NCR was contacted, it feigned ignorance about the incident. However, when Yogendra Sharma, the President of the Federation of Noida RWAs was contacted, he said that they have taken cognizance of the allegations and will speak to Gaur Grandeur”s RWA.