KOCHI: The Kerala Police on Tuesday submitted before the High Court that the IT division of Uralungal Labour Contract Cooperative Society (ULCCS) is not authorised to access Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) data or the software as part of ‘Blockchain passport verification’.
In an affidavit, the state police made it clear that no CCTNS data will be shared with ULCCS or any other extraneous agency. The police filed the affidavit in response to a petition filed by KPCC secretary Jyothikumar Chamakkala challenging the order granting the society access to the CCTNS network.
The court had stayed the order and the directive to pay `35 lakh to ULCC for completion of the concept for Blockchain-based police verification.
According to the petitioner, disclosure of any information regarding the citizen to a private party is against the privacy of the individual. As a consequence of the order issued by the state police chief, the entire information with the police can be accessed by the co-operative society which is under the control of CPM.
The affidavit stated that the ULCCS was instructed that after completing the development of the application, it should be transferred to the Kerala Police. The application shall be accessed and used by the system administrator of Kerala Police and the ULCCS shall have no access to the software. The earlier orders issued by the government have not been given effect till date.
CCTNS application is used by all state police forces in India. It was developed by TCS and YCS is the system integrator for the CCTNS of Kerala police. Though the blockchain-based passport verification application is developed by ULCCS, the society does not have access to the data held either by the passport verification application or the CCTNS application. “The misgiving that CCTNS data is being shared with ULCCS has arisen because of the typographical error in the order. To clarify all doubts and misunderstanding on the basis of the wrong wording, the state police chief issued a clarification order on January 10,” stated the affidavit.