Who we are
Sabha is the members' app of [Party name]. It is used for chats, groups, calls and live meetings ("Sabhas") between approved party members. This notice explains what the app stores, why, who can see it, how long it is kept, and how you can see, correct or delete it.
The data controller (the "Data Fiduciary" under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023) is [Party name], [Party office address]. Contact: [Contact email].
What we store
| Data | Why |
|---|---|
| Phone number | To sign you in. We send a one-time code by SMS to check the number is yours. |
| Name and profile photo | So other members know who you are. The photo is optional. |
| District, assembly constituency, mandal, village | To place you in the right local groups and for party organisation reports. You type or pick these; the app does not read your location. |
| Party designation or wing, title, "about" text | Shown on your profile; designation also puts you in your wing's group. Your wing shows your political affiliation, and some wings can show your religion, community or trade-union membership (for example the minority, BC, MBC, Banjara or trade-union wings) or that you are a student. Choose the role that applies to you. |
| Role and account status | Member, admin or super admin; whether your registration is pending, approved or blocked, which admin decided, the reason if it was not approved, and when you accepted these terms. |
| Messages | Direct messages, group messages and Sabha chat, so they can be delivered and shown again. Message text is encrypted at rest on our server. |
| Attachments | Photos, videos, audio files and documents you send, with their file names. Files are encrypted at rest. A file can be opened by anyone who has its link; links are long random codes that are only given to the people in the chat. |
| Calls | A record of each call: who called whom, voice or video, start and end time. The call audio and video are not recorded. |
| Sabha attendance and polls | When you joined and left each Sabha or group call, for the party's attendance reports. Poll and survey answers you give, including answers you type (on anonymous polls your name is not stored with the answer). Answers you type yourself are encrypted at rest. |
| Reports and blocks | Reports you send about a message or a member (reason, optional note and a copy of the reported message), kept so admins can act on them. The note is encrypted at rest. Members you block (only you see this). |
| Online status | Whether you are online now and when you were last seen. |
| Device identifiers | A push token from Google or Apple, only if you allow notifications, used only to deliver them. A random id the app makes when it is installed, sent with diagnostics (below). The Firebase installation id that Google's notification and crash-report services create on the phone. |
| Technical data | Your IP address is used briefly to protect sign-in and the service from abuse (rate limits) and appears in server logs. If you are a party admin, what you do as an admin is recorded in an audit log with your IP address; the IP address is removed from it after 30 days. |
| Diagnostics | When something goes wrong in the app (an error, a call that does not connect or loses sound), the app reports it to our server so we can fix it: the kind of error, call quality numbers (connection type, delay, lost sound), and your device details (phone model, operating system, app version, network type, language, the random app id). These reports never contain your messages. The app sends none of them before you agree to these terms by tapping Continue on the sign-in screen; until then they wait on your phone (at most 3 days). Reports sent before you sign in carry no account. Crashes of the Android and iPhone app are reported separately to Google Firebase Crashlytics, without your name, number or account id. |
We do not collect your location from the device, your contacts, your SMS messages or any advertising identifier. The app has no advertising and no third-party analytics.
On your device
The app keeps on your phone: your sign-in (in the Android and iPhone apps, in the phone's secure storage: the Android Keystore, the iPhone Keychain on this device only), the last phone number you signed in with (to fill in the sign-in screen), your push token, the random app id, diagnostics waiting to be sent (at most 3 days) and, for up to a day, photos and files you opened. Signing out removes your sign-in, the saved phone number, the push token and the diagnostics waiting to be sent, and gives the app a new random id. On Android, the app's data is not included in phone backups; on iPhone, your sign-in and the app's web storage are not either. Screenshots and screen recording are blocked in the Android and iPhone apps, and call, Sabha and photo screens show a faint mark with your name and the last 4 digits of your number, to discourage copying.
Camera, microphone, photos and notifications
The app asks for the camera and microphone only when you start or join a call, speak in a Sabha, or take a photo to send in a chat. It sees only the photos and files you pick yourself, and saves a photo or file to your phone only when you tap Save. It asks for notifications so you can hear about new messages, calls and Sabhas. You can turn any of these off in your phone's settings.
On Android, while you sign in, the app may ask "Allow Sabha to read this message?" for the SMS with your code. If you allow it, the app takes only the 6-digit code from that one message, on your phone; the message itself is not stored or sent anywhere. You can decline and type the code.
A notification about a group or Sabha chat message shows the group or Sabha name, the sender and the first part of the message (up to 120 characters), so that text passes through Google or Apple to reach your phone and can show on your lock screen. Notifications about direct messages and calls show only who it is from, never the content.
Live Sabha and group-call audio and video pass through our media server so they can reach every listener; large Sabhas are sent to listeners as a stream of a few seconds at a time through Cloudflare. They are not saved as a recording by the app. While you are in a Sabha or a call, its sound keeps playing when the phone is locked or you switch app, and you can float it in a small window over other apps; nothing plays in the background once you leave. One-to-one calls go directly between the two phones, or through our relay server when a direct connection is not possible.
Who can see your data
- Other approved members see your name, photo, designation, title, "about" text, district, constituency, mandal and village, and whether you are online. They do not see your phone number.
- People you message see the messages and files you send them. Group members see what you post in the group, and Sabha participants see what you say or show on stage. A Sabha can have thousands of listeners.
- Party admins see registration details including your phone number, approve or block accounts, can open any group's messages (each time is recorded in the audit log), and see attendance reports and an audit log of admin actions. They can download attendance lists of a Sabha with names and phone numbers for party work; such copies are the party's records and are not reached when you delete your account in the app. When you report a message or a member, admins see the report, your name and the reported message; they review reports within 24 hours.
- Party records. If you are a registered party member, an admin may add your name, number, place and wing from the party's membership register so that you skip approval; you see this notice when you first sign in.
- Service providers that run the app for us, only on our instructions: Amazon Web Services (hosting, database and backups, in India: Mumbai); Cloudflare (network protection for our web address, delivery of live Sabha streams, and storage of encrypted files and encrypted backups); Airtel IQ (SMS delivery of sign-in codes; MSG91 only if we change SMS provider, and we will update this notice); Google Firebase Cloud Messaging and Apple Push Notification service (notifications, including the start of group and Sabha messages as described above); Google Firebase Crashlytics (crash reports of the Android and iPhone app, kept by Google for up to 90 days); and, during call setup, a Google STUN server that sees your IP address. Google and Cloudflare may process data outside India. Each provider processes data only for the service it gives us, under terms that require the same or equal protection of your data as this notice.
- On the website only (not in the Android and iPhone apps, which carry their own copies), fonts, icons and the video player load from Google Fonts, cdnjs and jsDelivr, which see your IP address when they serve them.
We do not sell your data or share it for advertising. We disclose data to authorities only when the law requires it.
How long we keep it
- Your profile, messages and files are kept while your account exists. Files that were uploaded but never sent are deleted after 24 hours.
- Sign-in codes expire after 5 minutes. A sign-in lasts 30 days, or until you sign out.
- Diagnostics on our server are deleted after 30 days. Crash reports in Firebase Crashlytics are deleted by Google after 90 days.
- Server logs (including IP addresses) are deleted after 30 days. Admins' IP addresses are removed from the audit log after 30 days.
- A copy of a reported message is deleted 30 days after the report is closed.
- Messages you sent, call records, attendance, poll answers, reports and the admin audit log are kept as party records, also after you delete your account (see below).
- Backups: everything deleted from the app is gone from all our backups within 30 days. Copies of the server disk kept for disaster recovery are deleted after 14 days, so a log entry can stay in one for up to 14 days after the log itself is deleted.
Deleting your account
You can delete your account at any time in the app: Profile → Delete account. You confirm with a code sent to your phone. When you delete:
- Your name, phone number, photo and all profile details are erased, also from the group-call notices that showed your name.
- All files you sent are deleted from our server.
- You are removed from every group and Sabha, your blocks and notification tokens are deleted, and you are signed out on all devices.
- Diagnostics your phone sent to our server are deleted.
- Messages you sent stay in the chats they were sent to, shown as from "Deleted member", so the conversation still makes sense for the other people in it. Call records, attendance, your answers to named polls (including answers you typed), reports you filed or that were filed about you, and admin audit entries about your account also stay, linked only to "Deleted member". Your name stays where other members typed it in their own messages.
Full steps, including what to do if you can no longer open the app: Delete your account.
Your rights and choices
- See and correct. Change your name, photo, title and "about" text in Profile. To correct your district, constituency, mandal, village or designation, ask a party admin or write to our grievance officer; we answer within 7 days.
- Get a copy. Download a copy of the data we hold about you in the app: Profile → Download my data. You confirm with a code sent to your phone, and get one file with your profile, groups, the messages you wrote, links to your files, your poll answers, calls, attendance, reports, the diagnostics your phone sent, and the service providers that process your data.
- Know what we hold. Write to [Contact email] for a summary of the data we hold about you and the service providers it was shared with; we answer within 7 days.
- Delete. Delete your account in the app, or ask us to by email. You can delete your own messages for everyone within an hour of sending them.
- Withdraw consent. You can withdraw your consent at any time by deleting your account (Profile → Delete account) or by writing to [Contact email]. It is as easy as giving it. We then stop using your data and erase it as described above, except what the law requires us to keep. Notifications, camera and microphone can be turned off at any time in your phone's settings.
- Nominate. You may name another person to exercise these rights for you if you die or become unable to; write to [Grievance officer email].
- Complain. Write to our grievance officer (below). If you are not satisfied with the answer, you may complain to the Data Protection Board of India.
- Language. Ask [Contact email] for this notice in Telugu or another language listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution.
Security
Connections to the app use HTTPS. Message text, file names, attachments, poll answers you type, report notes and the reasons admins give are encrypted at rest, with a key that is not kept in the database itself. Your phone number and profile details are protected by access control on our server and an encrypted disk, but are not separately encrypted. Sign-in codes are stored only as a hash and expire after 5 minutes. One-to-one calls are encrypted between the two phones. Group calls and Sabhas are encrypted on the way to and from our media server, but not end to end.
If there is a data breach
If a breach of personal data affects you, we will tell you in the app or by SMS without delay, with what happened, what it means for you and what we are doing, and we will report it to the Data Protection Board of India and to CERT-In as the law requires.
Children
Sabha is for party members aged 18 and over. When you register you confirm that you are 18 or older; admins refuse registrations from anyone younger. If you believe a child has registered, write to [Contact email] and we will delete the account.
Changes
If we change this notice we will update the date above and tell members in the app when the change matters.
Grievance officer
For a complaint or a request about your personal data (Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023) or about content in the app (Information Technology Rules, 2021), write to our grievance officer: [Grievance officer name], [Grievance officer email]. We acknowledge a complaint within 24 hours and reply within 7 days.
Contact
[Party name]
[Party office address]
[Contact email]