Opposition parties say the tie-up with US firm Sprinklr was in violation of all norms.
New Delhi: In a major climb down, the Pinarayi Vijayan government in Kerala on Thursday informed the Kerala High Court that the US-based PR and marketing firm, Sprinklr, with whom the state had signed an agreement early March, will now have nothing to do with collecting data of coronavirus patients in the state. The arrangement on collection of data with Srinklr had come under public scrutiny after the Opposition–both Congress and the BJP–raised objections saying the tie-up with the US firm was in violation of all norms and arbitrarily taken by the Chef Minister without even discussing the matter in the Cabinet. Asking the government to scrap the deal, they alleged that no global tender was floated prior to selecting the company and the legal department was not even consulted. Moreover, according to the Opposition, the data of 1.75 lakh corona affected people were collected without their prior consent. However, the Chief Minister, though tried to brush aside the allegations in the initial stages, had firmly refused to give in to the Opposition demand and cancel the deal. Vijayan , in one of his weekly televised programme “Nammal Munnottu”, had accused the media of “muck raking” and giving undue importance to controversies at a time when the state was in the forefront of fighting corona virus in the country. The government would not “step back from the deal because few vested interests had tried to malign it,” Vijayan had said.
“Sprinklr offered its services free. The state did not have a comparable IT too and hence hired Sprinklr,” he had contended. Leader of the Opposition, Ramesh Chennithala while condemning the move to “demonise the media”, asked the Chief Minister to explain why he had “surreptitiously chosen Sprinklr” over the Kerala government’s own experienced Centre for Development of Imaging Technology (C-DIT), which possess diverse skill sets.
Interestingly, in its affidavit on Thursday, the state government said all the data will now be analysed by the state owned C-DIT and have asked Sprinklr to delete all the data that it has with them. The only role Sprinklr now will have would be for software updating. The affidavit also pointed out that Sprinklr will have no access to the data which is now in the custody of C-DIT which will have access to the Amazon Cloud server. The state government further said that Sprinklr had been directed to destroy all residual data, if any, with immediate effect. No data was shared to Sprinklr after it was transferred to C-DIT clod space and Sprinklr has no access to this system. In case any data need to be shared, a detailed protocol including anonymisation would be followed. The government had also asked the Director, Kerala State IT Mission and Registrar C-DIT to ensure that all the data collected and collated got anonymised before being shared with any third party service provider or used with any software for the processing of the said data. Last month, the Kerala High Court after hearing various petitioners in the controversial transfer of Covid-19 patients data by the Kerala government, had refused to stay the agreement, which the state government had claimed as a moral victory. However, the court at that time had given a number of directions to the state government, saying all safeguards regarding data privacy should be maintained. The case is scheduled to come up for a final hearing and hence the new affidavit was filed by the state government. A jubilant State Congress president Mullapally Ramachandran said that it’s now clear that whatever the Opposition had been raising about this controversial deal was correct. “Vijayan should now come clear on this and one fails to understand why he was so adamant. This was a corrupt deal and we will continue our agitation against the deal,” Ramachandran said, adding: “one doesn’t know for whom this deal was done.”
The affidavit has infused a new lease of life into the Opposition in the state which had been silenced by an over-lording Chief Minister. Any criticism against the Left Front government is construed as anti-Pinarayi and against the interests of Kerala. As the government went into the defensive with the Chief Minister refusing to entertain any questions on Sprinklr at his daily evening press briefing, opposition Congress has upped its ante. Vijayan had been vocal about the deal in the past stating the “extraordinary times called for extraordinary measures”. Leader of the Opposition Ramesh Chennithala on Friday challenged Vijayan to go public on why his government had “recanted” the “surreptitious deal” with Sprinklr in its affidavit filed in the High Court. Chennithala said his party suspects that the CPM would use the data collected through Sprinklr to the party’s advantage in the local body and assembly elections under the cover of public health crisis. The Congress is now demanding a CBI probe into the deal.
The BJP leadership, on the other hand, has strangely gone into a shell. The other communist party, CPI, a partner in the Left Front had raised its objections to the deal to the discomfort of Big Brother CPM. Now Chennithala is trying to incite the CPI once again saying that he has the “silent backing” of CPI state secretary Kanam Rajendran in protecting the “vital health data” of the people of Kerala. Many things are indeed happening in the state under the cover of “health protection”. Of course, licences to open new liquor bars in the state during corona times are not mercifully credited to that.