Sprinklr deal: First committee insulted by govt, say sources close to two members
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Following the appointment of a second committee for examining the data deal with the US-based Sprinklr Inc, sources close to the two-member first committee, which had highlighted procedural lapses by the state government, have termed the latest development as “strange, odd and an insult’ to the two experts.
The committee comprising M Madhavan Nambiar, former civil aviation secretary and IT secretary, and Gulshan Rai, former cyber security coordinator, Government of India, submitted its detailed report on October 22 and had urged the state government to make it public, which has not happened.
The committee had found procedural lapses in the way the state government entered into an agreement with Sprinklr. Their report pointed out lapses on the part of the IT department, which entered into the agreement unilaterally without taking the law department into confidence.
Madhavan Nambiar and Gulshan Rai were appointed on April 20 to probe three aspects -- whether the privacy pertaining to 1.8 lakh citizens have been adequately protected or not, whether there have been any procedural lapses while finalising the agreement with Sprinklr Inc and whether deviations, if any, were fair, justified and reasonable considering the predicament the state was facing. A person close to Gulshan Rai said the latter agreed to take up the role after much persuasion from the state government.
“Gulshan Rai took up the role after facing stiff opposition from certain quarters. He along with Madhavan Nambiar did a lot of hard work and came up with a detailed report in which suggestions and the way forward were also included. Their expertise is matchless and now the state government has appointed a retired district judge to examine the expert committee’s report.
What more can he come up with? It is an insult to the two members of the previous committee,” a source close to them told TNIE on condition of anonymity.The state government hasn’t revealed the reasons for hiding their report from the public domain when the members themselves had urged it to make it public. They had gone through the terms of reference and had accordingly come up with a comprehensive report which has since been ignored, causing loss of credibility to them.