After facing allegations of data theft, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) is on the backfoot. But, its defence is bizarre at best. The party’s mobile app, ‘Seva Mitra’, is under the scanner after it was found to contain sensitive information and exhaustive data of individual voters of Andhra Pradesh. The complainant, Lokeshwar Reddy, a data analyst from Hyderabad, and opposition parties, alleged that the ruling TDP is using confidential information available with the AP government to map voters and study trends to manipulate the upcoming state and general elections.
Though an average voter has been profiled under a number of categories with help from party volunteers on ground, the most alarming aspect is the colour photos of crores of voters found in the app. IT Grids CEO Ashok Dakavaram, who developed the application, is absconding after the Telangana police registered a case and commenced investigation.
TDP leaders have been saying that there is no violation since the colour photos belonged to their party workers, and not average voters. According to the police and the complainant, the application had access to colour photos of around 3.5 crore voters. When asked for their side of the story, TDP spokesperson Lanka Dinakar said, “TDP has 75 lakh members and only their colour photos are there in the app.” When reminded of the allegation that colour photos of 3.5 crore voters were found, he said, “The photos of family members and the relatives of our workers are also there, which increases the number to crores.”
According to the latest figures from the office of the chief electoral officer, the total number of voters in Andhra Pradesh comes around 3.78 crores. If the TDP is to be believed, then almost every voter in AP is a party activist or a supporter.
The BJP alleged that the TDP stole the colour photos from either the Election Commission (EC) or the state government. The BJP spokesperson of AP, Buddha Chandrashekar, said, “It is a clear case of cyber crime. Apart from the state government and the EC, nobody has the right to use colour photos of voters from their electoral IDs. How do they have this data? The TDP workers involved in this exercise, along with CM Chandrababu Naidu and IT Minister Lokesh, should be arrested.”
YSRCP MLA and Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Chairman B. Rajendranath suspects that the data has been stolen from the EC.
When quizzed, Chief Electoral Officer Gopalkrishna Dwivedi said that the voter details including their name and voter numbers are in the public domain and can be used by anyone. On colour photos, he said they are not probing the issue as it doesn’t fall under their jurisdiction.
Aadhaar numbers, bank account details of voters, and a list of beneficiaries, were also found in the app, as per police sources. The Telangana police has constituted a nine-member Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the case.