Pinarayi Vijayan, Chief Minister of Kerala, who was on Cloud Nine following reports about his “effective handling” of the coronavirus pandemic in the State, finds himself under a shadow as reports about a deal signed by the Government and Sprinklr, a US based company, has generated a lot of controversy.
The ‘agreement’ reported to have been signed between the Government of Kerala and Sprinklr was to make all medical data of persons tested positive for coronavirus and quarantined in the State would be made available to the US company which itself is facing legal action in that country for ‘theft of data’.
Vijayan in his daily press briefings at Thiruvananthapuram evaded all questions pertaining to the deal signed by the Government of Kerala and Sprinklr. Ramesh Chennithala, leader of the opposition, in a press meet, accused the chief minister of entering into an illegal deal worth hundreds of crores with the US company.
Though the allegations by Chennithala were played down by the Kerala media, things took a serious turn when former Chief Minister Oommen Chandi, who is also the General Secretary of the AICC entered the scene and said the deal was fishy.
“An agreement of this kind should have signed with the concurrence of the departments of law, finance and information technology. No such thing has been done. I am sorry to tell that there was no formal agreement between the Kerala Government and Sprinklr USA when Chennithala held his press meet,” Chandi told The Pioneer.
The former chief minister said that the whole deal smacked of impropriety. “The beauty of democracy is transparency. Sprinklr USA was brought into Kerala through the back door and the Chief Minister should explain why this was done.
We all know that the whole country was facing a pandemic in the form of coronavirus and we do not want to play politics. But violation of all norms and laws of the land at this juncture does not augur well for the Government. Mr Vijayan has a responsibility to come clean in this issue,” said Chandi.
Meanwhile Janam TV, a satellite news channel, made another astartling disclosure by alleging that US based Mayo Clinic and an Australian telecom company were involved in the making of this “illegal deal”. “Mayo Clinic is the place where Chief Minister Vijayan frequents for his medical check up and the it is the management of Sprinklr which takes care of his well being while he is in the US,” said G K Suresh Babu, chief editor of the channel. Suresh Babu is the journalist who brought to light the illegal deal signed between CNC Lavlin of Canada and the Kerala Government in 1996 when Vijayan was the minister for power in the then E K Nayanar-led CPI-M government.
The corruption case is being heard by the Supreme Court. K Shivsankar, the IT secretary of Kerala, who initially said that there was no deal with Sprinklr was forced to make a vault face and accepted full responsibility for the signing of the agreement with the US company. Interestingly, Mayo Clinic and Telstra, the Australian telecommunication company are clients of Sprinklr.
Sreejit Panickar, an IT expert with 15 years of global experience said the deal with Sprinklr was a blatant violation of all rules and regulations regarding sharing of data.
“Any agreement or tender made by the Government of Kerala should be signed by the Chief Secretary for and on behalf of the Governor. There was neither agreement nor tender in this case. The sharing of data involves so many legal procedures which have been violated wantonly,” said Panickar.
Ram Rajendrababu, a US based IT specialist, also concurred with Panickar. “A deal like this in US would have put the main antagonists in prison,” said Ram over telephone from US who described the data as New Oil. “It is that precious,” he said.
Though the CPI-M fielded all eminent leaders like Law Minister A K Balan and polit bureau member S R Pillai to safeguard Vijayan, their arguments are yet to convince the detractors. Balan said there was a deep rooted conspiracy against Pinarayi Vijayan by some sections.
He has not named anyone in particular, there are certain leaders in the CPI-M who are trying to put Vijayan in a tight corner.