In a major relief to the LDF government, the Kerala High Court on Tuesday dismissed a plea alleging the unlawful use of personal data by the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO). The petitioners, Dr Rasheed Ahammed P and Anil Kumar KM, had argued that the government was exploiting contact details from the SPARK and K-SMART databases to send bulk WhatsApp messages ahead of the 2026 assembly elections.

Justice Bechu Kurian Thomas, presiding over the case, observed that the communications sent to government employees and citizens highlighting state achievements cannot be viewed as a violation of the right to privacy. Delivering the judgment, the Court noted, "It is evident that the nature of the message relates to salary and other purposes, benefits, which cannot be regarded as a political campaign to impugn the message to the colour of illegality. The message that has been sent to the employee of the state, as well as the person whose data is kept in spark portal, relate to DA and HRA. The message can hence be regarded as a measure of communicating to the employees of the government the benefits rolled out related to salary, and other purposes, which can be viewed only as a measure of good governance, by a social welfare state, such as that cannot be granted illegal or for any illegitimate purpose."

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The petitioners had contended that data provided through the Service Payroll Administrative Repository for Kerala (SPARK) was strictly for administrative functions like salary processing. They alleged this information was consolidated via the Kerala State IT Mission (KSITM) and diverted to the CMO for political outreach, invoking the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP Act) and Article 21 of the Constitution.

While the court has cleared the legal hurdle regarding the alleged "leak”, the political row remains active. Documents recently released by Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala suggest that the CMO’s data requests were not limited to official staff but extended to the K-SMART platform, which houses the personal records of over one crore citizens.