Job posts fuel talk of TikTok return to India amid thaw in ties with China

Rumours of its comeback excite many but app continues to be unavailable in country

- Debarshi Dasgupta

NEW DELHI - Speculation is mounting that TikTok could return to India, more than five years after it was banned amid a deep freeze in the country's ties with China following a fatal border clash.

The Chinese social media platform was among 59 apps that New Delhi pulled the plug on in June 2020, a fortnight after the melee in the Galwan River valley in Ladakh along the disputed Himalayan border. At least 20 Indian soldiers and an unspecified number of Chinese troops were killed.

It was the first military confrontation between the Asian neighbours to have resulted in fatalities on either side since 1975.

Now, amid a noticeable thaw in ties between New Delhi and Beijing, rumours have begun circulating that TikTok is preparing for a potential comeback in India.

The country accounted for the platform's second-largest global user base in 2020 after China, with nearly 200 million users.

In the past fortnight, some Indian users have claimed that TikTok's website, including its homepage, has become partially accessible, even though the app continues to be unavailable on the Google Play Store, as well as Apple's App Store.

Some have attributed this to a network-level technical glitch.

The rumours of TikTok's impending return have been further fuelled by the company and its parent company ByteDance posting job vacancies on LinkedIn for at least five roles based in India, including as recently as Sept 2.