Thiruvananthapuram: Senior Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala on Wednesday accused CM Pinarayi Vijayan of orchestrating a ‘massive data leak’ from the K-SMART application and demanded immediate legal action against him and senior officials in the chief minister’s office.Addressing a press conference, Chennithala alleged that the breach was executed directly at the instance of the CMO in the run-up to the assembly elections. He said he was placing before the media a letter dated Dec 31, 2025, sent by Seeram Sambasiva Rao, officer on special duty to the CM, to the chief mission sirector, demanding the transfer of complete personal details of govt employees from the K-SMART application to the information and public relations department (PRD).According to Chennithala, the letter stated that the govt was introducing a digital communication platform titled the ‘Centralised Notification Hub for Govt Services’, and that preparatory work already commenced under the PRD. As part of this initiative, personal data of employees across all departments was compiled. The directive specifically sought details from the K-SMART application in Excel format, including phone number, name, age, gender, district, taluk, ward, and local body.He further pointed out that the communication instructed that the collected information be submitted to the special secretary of the PRD before Feb 12 and that the same dataset be shared with the IT Mission.“In essence, this is a large-scale data breach executed directly by the CMO, amounting to a total violation of employees’ privacy. The responsibility rests squarely with the chief minister,” Chennithala said. He added that no such communication could be issued by the officer on special duty without the chief minister’s explicit approval..
