TDP At War With TRS Over AP Voters' Data "Stealing"

The issue of a city-based company, IT Grids, allegedly having access to the private data of about 3.5 crore voters of Andhra Pradesh is snowballing into a major war between the TDP on one side and the YSR Congress and the TRS on the other.

After a YSR Congress Party data analyst Lokeshwar Reddy filed a police complaint on March 2 that the Hyderabad-based company, which has created and which maintains the Sevamitra app for the TDP (the app is meant for communications between the party leadership and its booth-level co-ordinators and workers), had come into possession of the data that only the AP government was supposed to have access to (implying that the TDP, which runs the AP government, had transferred this data to the company to use to the TDP's benefit), and that all of this data was available on the Sevamitra app, the Telangana police (the Cyberabad police to be precise) have been investigating the company's employees, and have also raided its premises and seized several drives containing data.

However, there is no confirmation so far that the police have discovered any private official data stolen from the AP government from the IT Grids servers or disks - they claim they are still processing all the data that they have seized. The police are also yet to get access to data stored on Amazon servers by IT Grids, and have written to Amazon.

The TDP alleges that this action by the Telangana police on a company which works for the TDP and has access to TDP party cadre data is intended to give the TRS access to all of that data and enable it to pass it on to the YSR Congress, which can then use it to it its advantage and the TDP's disadvantage in the upcoming Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. It alleges that the TRS is supporting the YSR Congress to help it defeat the TDP in the upcoming elections.

If that is a spin, it can work - the TRS was the biggest force behind the division of united AP, and portraying the YSR Congress as being friends with it can alienate the voters of AP from the party (the YSR Congress).

The YSR Congress meanwhile alleges that the TDP is using the data to identify people who are likely to vote against it (though it is unclear how that can be done) and have them removed from the voter list.

Meanwhile, there are also jurisdictional issues between the AP and the Telangana police. The case pertains to data of AP voters, but IT Grids is located in Telangana. AP wants the case transferred to it (where the TDP, which runs the AP government, can decide what to do), and the Telangana police seem less than eager to do that. Signs of a face-off between the AP and the Telangana police were visible yesterday when the AP police landed up at the house of Lokeshwar Reddy to allegedly whisk him off to AP and the Telangana police came to his rescue.