Sivasankar overlooked NIC for IT project in High Court

Kochi: The Chief Justice has been apprised of the placement of IT professionals in the Kerala High Court on the intervention of bureaucrat M Sivasankar who is now custody over money-laundering charges linked to the diplomatic gold smuggling case.

A status information report submitted to the Chief Justice states that it was Sivasankar, the former secretary of the IT department, who recommended that the members of the high-level IT panel could be appointed on contract basis for a period of five years.

The status report on the appointment of the IT team was prepared on the directions of the Chief Justice. The report has been prepared by Justice A Mohammad Mushtaq.

The report states that Sivasankar had recommended Government IT Park CEO Rishikesh R Nair and International Centre for Free and Open Source Software director Dr Jayashankar Prasad for the interview board by completely avoiding the representatives of National Informatics Centre (NIC). This clearly indicates that the state government had intervened in the appointment of the high-level IT Team.

Legal experts had pointed out that if an interview board having state government's dominance had been constituted for making appointments for a project in the judiciary, it is a clear violation of Section 229 of the Constitution. It was the IT department under Principal Secretary Sivasankar which informed the High Court that the NIC, which carried out the computerization work of all high courts in the country, did not have the expertise to execute IT and allied development works in the Kerala High Court.

The strategically important IT appointments came to the notice of the investigating agencies when they were examining all important contracts and appointments made during the tenure of Sivasankar who is now facing the probe of central agencies in connection with the gold smuggling case.