KOCHI: The High Court on Tuesday asked the government to explain the jurisdiction clause in the IT contract with Sprinklr. “Sprinklr has been only tasked with computing and analysing. If the firm or anybody else misuses the data, the state government will be responsible. How will it hold the company responsible for a breach? It will have to go to New York (US) or wherever and file a case,” observed a division bench. “If there is any breach of confidentiality of an individual, he or she only needs to sue the state government. It is the government’s responsibility to ensure there is no breach,” the bench said.
In an interview, the IT secretary had said the contract was not sent to the Law Department before the state signed it. The court asked the government to explain why this happened. It also sought an explanation on the confidentiality of the data and posted the case to April 24. “We do not want the Covid epidemic to be substituted by a data epidemic,” it said.
On the government’s liability, the court said, “First, we were concerned that you said it is not privileged information, which we cannot accept. The additional advocate general intervened and submitted, ‘No, it is not like that’ and it is very sensitive and privileged information.” “If the government accepts that the information is privileged and sensitive, then its obligation to ensure that the data is protected is far more than normal. Every information you (government) are uploading to the server from today is your responsibility. We’ll make it very clear to you. We’ll hold state personally responsible, the officers personally responsible, whoever, if at all, is found guilty later,” it said.