Personal details of members of Stree Suraksha Project leaked; Chennithala calls for Chief Minister's resignation
KOCHI: Congress Working Committee member Ramesh Chennithala has alleged that the personal details of lakhs of women in the Stree Suraksha Scheme were leaked by the Chief Minister's Office and handed over to private agencies for the purpose of election campaigning. The personal details of women above 35 years of age registered in the scheme were collected through a letter written by the Chief Minister’s Officer on Special Duty Seeram Sambasiva Rao on February 7. Chennithala released that letter as well.
“Handing over commercially valuable government-verified personal information such as phone numbers, names, ages, genders, districts, taluks, wards, and local bodies of over one crore individuals, including Stree Suraksha scheme members, welfare pensioners, and small entrepreneurs, to private companies is a criminal offence. The Chief Minister who led this should resign,” Chennithala demanded at a press conference.
“The data was directed to be transferred to a person working on a contract basis in the IT Mission. Although the job is in the IT Mission, he is sitting in the Chief Minister’s office. An order has been issued to empanel about ten private agencies in the name of expanding the activities of the IT Department. The order was issued based on the minutes of a meeting called by the Chief Secretary weeks before the elections. There is a mystery in urgently empanelling so many private agencies. All departments should expand their IT operations only through manpower providers identified by the IT department, the order states. A large amount of data is being collected from departments and handed over to private agencies to send business WhatsApp messages."
Chennithala pointed out that in 2020-21, M. Sivasankaran, who was the Secretary of the IT Department and the then Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister, decided to hand over people's health information to the Sprinklr company, and it was defeated through legal action.