New Delhi, May 9 (IANS): Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said on Saturday that the government's Covid contact tracing app Aarogya Setu has alerted the government about more than 650 hotspots across the country which could have been missed otherwise.

Kant also claimed that the app, which has now been made mandatory for all government employees, alerted about over 300 emerging hotspots which helped the government take swift action.

The app came under question after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi alleged that it can be used to snoop upon the citizen, a charge the government vehemently denied.

"The Aarogya Setu app is a sophisticated surveillance system, outsourced to a pvt operator, with no institutional oversight -- raising serious data security & privacy concerns. Technology can help keep us safe; but fear must not be leveraged to track citizens without their consent," he had tweeted.

The app alerts the user about how many Covid-19 positive cases are around, including symptomatic individuals. It also alerts about trends giving a sense of emerging hotspots.