Kochi: The Kerala High Court on Friday stopped short of cancelling the state government’s deal with US company Sprinklr to analyse health data relating to Covid-19 patients, but turned down the government’s plea that the requirement of consent by the person who provides the information must be dispensed with.
In an interim order, a division bench of the court said it was not doing anything at the moment to interfere with the deal in view of the overriding importance of fighting the disease.
But it declared the deal suffered from a number of flaws. The deal with the American company had led to a political storm with Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala accusing CM Pinarayi Vijayan of suspicious personal involvement.
The opposition leaders even suspected the role of a company owned by the CM’s daughter in entering into the deal. Further, the deal was signed without referring it to the law department, which was totally in the dark about the sensitive issue.
According to the terms of the agreement with the company, any dispute relating to the deal can only be questioned in a New York court as it specifically rules out jurisdiction for Indian courts. The deal was entered into by the IT secretary, a chief adviser to CM and the official has been claiming it was based on his own assessment about the capabilities of the company.
The govt has been justifying the deal with the US firm on the ground it had offered to handle the data analysis free of cost for the initial period of Covid defence. It will charge the government only if the deal is extended beyond the initial period.
The Opposition alleged the state govt entered into the deal to sell the sensitive health data to major pharma or insurance firms as such data has huge business value. The govt said only Sprinklr was capable of doing the job, so, the court refrained from scrapping the deal.
