NEW DELHI—The Indian government has issued an order banning 54 Chinese mobile applications that it says constitute a threat to the country’s national security, according to local reports. The move is the latest in a series of similar bans instituted amid a protracted border dispute between the two sides. The Indian Ministry of Home Affairs issued a Feb. 13 statement saying that the 54 applications could collect sensitive user data through phone cameras and microphones for espionage and surveillance activities. “India is now taking cybersecurity more seriously because of the increasing digitization of the economy and the threat such Chinese apps, as well as Chinese telecom equipment, pose,” Pathikrit Payne, a New Delhi-based research consultant in geopolitical and strategic affairs, told The Epoch Times. India started banning Chinese apps after a June 2020 bloody skirmish with Chinese forces in the disputed Himalayan border region in which 20 Indian soldiers died. Since …