By The Hindu Bureau

Copyright thehindu

CPI(M) Rajya Sabha member John Brittas voiced concern over the decision to outsource the operational backend work of the parliamentary e-mail system to a private company. In a letter addressed to Upper House Chairman C.P. Radhakrishnan, Mr. Brittas argued that this move could compromise the confidentiality of communications sent by parliamentarians through their official email accounts.

In a three-page letter that he shared on X, Mr. Brittas said the decision struck at the very foundation of our institutional autonomy and parliamentary sovereignty. The communications so far were entirely handled by the National Informatics Centre (NIC). As per Mr. Brittas letter, Zoho Corporation, a private entity, had now been given the responsibility for the operational backend. Mr. Brittas said “it is reliably learnt that as many as 50 lakh government email inboxes will be managed by the private firm.”

“The official Sansad email system of members of Parliament has been subsumed under the new framework, with NIC directing members of Parliament to use a new website address being managed by Zoho and the ‘OneAuth’ application developed by Zoho for multi-factor authentication.”

Mr. Brittas said these email accounts were the channels by which members of Parliament conduct all manner of official transactions, share sensitive documents, send legislative drafts, and communicate with constitutional authorities. “When such communications are routed through privately controlled back-end operations and an authentication system operated by a private firm, the independence of the Legislature stands, at the very least, exposed to risk of compromise,” he said. The government, he said, seemed to be justifying this transition on grounds of modernisation, scalability, and cybersecurity. “But the larger question remains unanswered — can the custodianship of the government’s communication systems, including those of Parliament itself, be routed through a private entity without undermining institutional independence? What prevents the government in beefing up the expertise and infrastructure to suit the needs of NIC or any other government agencies in this regard,” he asked.