Kerala Chief Minister stored at the hours of darkness over Sprinklr deal, says report by committee

By Express News Service
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Madhavan Nambiar committee, which probed the Sprinklr deal, has discovered that former IT secretary M Sivasankar unilaterally signed the deal retaining even the Chief Minister at the hours of darkness. The report has given a clear chit to the Chief Minister. It had already been reported that the legislation division’s consent was not taken. The Madhavan Nambiar committee report’s contents have come out by an RTI reply. It’s the primary time the state authorities has launched the contents of the Madhavan Nambiar committee report within the public area.

The Madhavan Nambiar committee was of the view that the proposal for putting in a digital platform for analyzing a disaster state of affairs like COVID-19 ought to have been mentioned with the Crisis Management group. The Crisis Management group, headed by the Chief Secretary together with the Secretaries of finance, income, well being, legislation and IT, ought to have been carefully concerned. It has been revealed that the Sprinklr proposal was not mentioned with the then Chief Secretary Tom Jose. Health and Family Welfare Secretary Dr Rajan N Khobragade too has confirmed that no formal session was taken with the well being division.

“The committee want to level out that the approval of the Chief Minister who can also be the IT minister was not taken earlier than the settlement was executed with Sprinklr Inc. Since we’re coping with date safety points and entrusting delicate knowledge to a international firm, this could possibly be detrimental to the curiosity of the state and its residents,” mentioned the report.

The committee additionally got here out with some suggestions. The C-DIT and the IT division should equip themselves to fastidiously analyze the proposals obtained from corporations like Sprinklr Inc. The employees of the IT division and significantly CDIT have to be educated in understanding, choice, developments in and dealing with of rising applied sciences, digital platforms and cyber safety.

Another advice is that strong and safe ICT infrastructure have to be arrange for set up of digital platforms and C-DIT should empanel the cyber safety auditing corporations for audit of the ICT techniques of the state authorities regularly.

Opposition chief Ramesh Chennithala had alleged that beneath the guise of COVID-19, the main points of sufferers have been offered to the American firm Sprinklr Inc. Following this, the Chief Minister appointed the Madhavan Nambiar committee. The two-member committee had Dr Gulshan Rai, former cyber safety coordinator on the Centre, because the second member.