Vijayan ducks questions on data transfer controversy

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By NS Desk 13-Apr-2020

Thiruvananthapuram, April 13 (IANS) Stung by the onslaught of the Congress-led opposition over the handing over of data of Covid-19 suspects to US-based PR and marketing firm Sprinklr, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Monday declined to answer any questions on the issue.

"The IT Secretary will be giving the details on it. I don't have time to waste on this," Vijayan told the media after chairing the daily review meeting on Covid-19 measures.

Leader of Opposition Ramesh Chennithala had first raised this issue on Saturday and then Vijayan said the company belongs to a Keralaite and he came forward with the offer to help and the state government is not paying anything to this company, while even the WHO is using this data.

Since then, Chennithala has been coming out against this data trade off and joining him in this have been former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, state Congress chief Mullapally Ramachandran and several Congress and UDF leaders, who have all pointed out that this was a "deal" and they wanted Vijayan to come clean on it.

The Congress had pointed out that IT Secretary M.Sivasankar has even appeared in the video put out by the US-based firm.

--IANS

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