Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Telangana Rakshana Sena ("the Party", "we", "us") collects, uses, stores and protects personal information gathered through our website, mobile application, membership drives, donation platform and admin systems. It applies to members, volunteers, donors and visitors, and is framed to be consistent with the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 ("DPDPA") and the Information Technology Act, 2000 and rules made thereunder.

Depending on how you interact with us, we may collect:

• Identity data: full name, date of birth (members must be 18 years or older), photograph, member ID.
• Contact data: mobile number (verified by OTP), email address, residential address, district/mandal/village/ward.
• Verification data: for party membership, your Aadhaar number and PAN if you choose to provide them, together with your voter ID, father's or spouse's name, blood group and an emergency contact. The identity numbers are optional and enrolment can be completed without them. Separately, for donations of ₹20,000 or more, PAN or another government ID is collected as required under Section 29C of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, and applicable Election Commission of India guidelines.
• Activity data: event RSVPs, task participation, community posts, poll/quiz responses, points and rewards earned on the app.
• Transaction data: the amount, date and reference of a contribution or merchandise order. We do not collect or store card, UPI or net-banking credentials, no online payment gateway is currently active on our website or app.
• Technical data: device identifiers, app version, IP address and diagnostic logs, collected for security and service reliability.

• To verify your identity and enrol you as a member or volunteer.
• To process donations, issue receipts, and meet statutory contribution-reporting obligations.
• To send you OTPs, updates, event invitations and campaign communication relevant to your area.
• To organise members geographically for local outreach, and to prevent duplicate or fraudulent registrations.
• To operate app features such as tasks, the merchandise store, the Passport rewards program and community feed.
• To comply with law enforcement, court orders, or Election Commission requirements.

We share personal data only where necessary to operate the platform, and only under contract:

• Payment processing: none at present. We do not operate an online payment gateway, so no payment processor receives any data from us today, and no card data is collected or shared. If we introduce an online contribution facility, it will be run by a payment provider regulated by the Reserve Bank of India, your payment details will be entered on that provider's own page rather than ours, and this policy will be updated before the facility goes live.
• SMS/OTP delivery: a third-party, DLT-registered SMS gateway delivers one-time passwords and transactional messages to your mobile number for authentication. It receives only your mobile number and the text of the message.
• Cloud infrastructure: our servers and backups are hosted with reputable cloud/hosting providers under standard confidentiality obligations.
• Legal/regulatory bodies: the Election Commission of India, tax authorities, or law enforcement, where legally required.

We do not sell personal data to advertisers or unrelated third parties.

Aadhaar and PAN are collected in two separate situations, and are handled the same way in both.

Membership enrolment. When you apply for party membership you may choose to provide your Aadhaar number and PAN. These are optional, and you can complete enrolment without them, though verification may take longer. We use them for one purpose only: to confirm that you are a real person and that one membership belongs to one individual.

Donations. For contributions above the statutory threshold, PAN or another government ID (Aadhaar, Voter ID or Passport) is collected solely to satisfy contribution-reporting law.

In both cases the number is encrypted before it is stored, using AES-256-GCM, and is never returned to you in full: our app displays only the last four digits. Authorised party administrators can view a full number only in order to check it against the document you submitted, and every such access is logged against that administrator's account. We do not share, sell or disclose these numbers to any third party except where compelled by law.

You may withdraw this information at any time by deleting your account in the app, under Settings, or by writing to our Grievance Officer. Deleting your account erases your membership identity information, subject only to the statutory retention requirements described in section 6.

We retain member and donation records for as long as your membership is active and thereafter for the period required by the Representation of the People Act, Income Tax Act, and Election Commission record-keeping norms. You may request deletion of your account; certain donation and compliance records must be retained regardless, as required by law.

Subject to applicable law, you may:

• Access the personal data we hold about you.
• Request correction of inaccurate information.
• Request erasure of your account data, the app supports this directly under Settings, and our Account Deletion page explains how to request it without the app, subject to the statutory retention requirements described above.
• Withdraw consent for non-essential communication at any time.
• Lodge a grievance with our Grievance Officer (see our Contact page for the published details and response timelines) or with the Data Protection Board of India.

We use encryption in transit (HTTPS/TLS), hashed and salted credentials, role-based access controls for our administrative console, rate-limiting against abuse, and regular backups. No system is completely immune to risk, and we continuously work to strengthen these protections.

Our services are intended for individuals aged 18 and above. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Material changes will be notified within the app or on this page, along with an updated "Last updated" date.

Questions about this policy, or requests relating to your personal data, can be sent to the Grievance Officer, Telangana Rakshana Sena, TRS Party Office, Road No. 12, Banjara Hills, Hyderabad, 500034, Telangana, India, at grievance@trsparty.org. We acknowledge every complaint within 24 hours and resolve it within 15 days of receipt. The full published details are on our Contact page.