A day after the Kerala High Court criticized the State government for a privacy breach, senior Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala accused Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan of orchestrating a large-scale collection of personal data. Chennithala claimed that the Chief Minister’s Office had requested comprehensive personal details of government employees from SPARK, the Service and Payroll Administrative Repository for Kerala. He labeled this action as a “naked example of data theft” and presented a copy of the letter allegedly from the CMO.
Chennithala disclosed that Sambasiva Rao from the CMO had instructed the compilation of employee data department-wise into Excel sheets through the K-SMART platform. The data was supposed to be provided to the Special Secretary of the Public Relations Department and included names, phone numbers, job details, and other personal information of all government employees. He emphasized that such a significant data breach could not have occurred without the Chief Minister’s knowledge, attributing it to an attempt to influence the upcoming Assembly elections and a violation of privacy safeguards set by the Supreme Court.
The letter, dated last December, mandated the submission of the data to the PRD Director before the 12th of the following month, stating that the information was being collected for “personal” purposes. These allegations emerged amidst the High Court’s scrutiny of the government’s protection of personal information of its employees. The court raised concerns about data access and availability, cautioning against further communication and demanding a detailed explanation from the government. A petition filed by Congress-affiliated leaders accused the misuse of employee data provided to the SPARK project management, a claim the court deemed serious, leading to a politically charged situation with the judiciary seeking accountability from the government.
