Kerala says Sprinklr will have no role in Covid data analysis

Kochi: In what appears to be a total turnaround, from the strong position Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had taken by handing over the Covid-19 data to a US-based PR and marketing firm -- Sprinklr, on Thursday, in an affidavit informed the Kerala High Court, that the company will have no more role in data analysis.

In its affidavit, 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 and the only role they will have would be for software updating.

The affidavit also points 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.

Last month, the Kerala High Court after hearing various petitioners in the controversial transfer of Covid-19 patients data by the Kerala government, while refusing to stay the agreement, gave a number of directions to the state government, saying all safeguards regarding data privacy be maintained and posted the case, which is soon coming up and hence the new affidavit was filed.

The main demand of the Opposition (both Congress and BJP) was to stay and cancel the agreement.

Reacting to the fresh development, State Congress president Mullapally Ramachandran said with this it's now clear all what we had raised 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 tirades on this and one doesn't know, for whom was this deal done," said Ramachandran.