THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The undue haste in the appointment of Cyber Emergency Response Team-Kerala(CERT-K) director Mahesh C I during the fag end of V S Achuthanandan’s tenure as Chief Minister has raised eyebrows. A group of IT Mission employees alleged in a petition submitted to the Chief Minister by IT Minister P K Kunhalikutty that one of the reasons for the hasty appointment was to track the emails and mobile phones of political leaders and his political rivals. All this was the handiwork of a caucus around the office of the former Chief Minister, the petition said. It has been pointed out that the then IT Secretary K Suresh Kumar had mentioned in the note that outgoing CERT-K director N Krishnan had handed over the application and recommended Mahesh for the post of director. But it seems to be false. IT Minister Kunhalikutty has written in the note that there was no such recommendations or records to prove this. Though great urgency was shown in appointing Mahesh, the nature of emergency was not at all clear in the file of January 6. Mahesh had not undertaken any emergency technical task immediately after his appointment to substantiate the plea that there was urgent need of countering any cyber attack, the IT Minister’s note said. Government Chief Whip P C George said he would ask the Chief Minister to order a comprehensive probe into the appointments made in the IT Department during the LDF regime. “We’ve found several irregular appointments in the IT Department during LDF rule. All those appointments have to be brought under the ambit of the probe,’’ he said.Ironically, the VS Government appointed a director at CERT-K to counter cyber terror from across the ‘enemy country’ the same week it sanctioned `5 crore to Pakistan as flood relief apparently to lure the minority Muslim vote bank in view of the Assembly elections. T G Mohandas of Kochi, who filed a writ petition in the High Court against this move, told Express that the counter affidavit filed by the state government in the High Court says the payment of `5 crore to Pakistan was finally made on December 24 last year. ‘’My argument is that the government paid `5 crore to Pakistan disregarding the court’s intervention and despite information of an impending cyber attack,’’ he told Express.Meanwhile, Kunhalikutty told Express in Kochi that “I have already intimated the Chief Minister on the irregularities in the appointment. I can give the detailed clarification only after checking the file concerned”.
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