The Karnataka government has cancelled the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that the Department of Primary and Secondary Education entered into with a private company stating that it would share personal details of parents of students in government, aided, and private schools and PU colleges.
After The Hindu reported on this, the MoU was tweaked stating that only data in public domain would be shared with the firm. On Friday, however, even the tweaked MoU was cancelled.
Goal of MoU
The goal was to digitise and improve the education system, but several school managements criticised the terms as they felt it would violate an individual’s fundamental right to privacy.
Welcome move
Welcoming the decision, D. Shashi Kumar, general secretary of Associated Managements of Primary and Secondary Schools in Karnataka, said the government must now do something to ensure that data of over two lakh government school teachers, which has already been shared, is protected.
“It was a blunder on the part of the department, and we are happy that the MoU has been cancelled. But, the government should initiate an inquiry into the breach of trust and privacy,” he said.
In a letter to the department, the private firm said the database has been returned on the date of termination of the Memorandum of Understanding.
The Department of Primary and Secondary Education, which had entered into the MoU on February 3, has mutually agreed to cancel the same and executed deed of cancellation on Friday.
The issue was also raised in the Legislative Council jointly by Arun Shahpur, Puttanna, S.V. Sankanur, and Amarnath Patil. Minister for Primary and Secondary Education Tanveer Sait, in his written reply to the members, said that there was no financial irregularities in the MoU, and the approval of the Law Department had been obtained before the agreement was signed.
‘Privacy protected’
It said that department has not shared details of private schools and teachers to the organisation. It has also said that the details of government schools are already available in the website of Department of Public Institutions. Details of parents and alumni are yet to be collected, it added.
The Minister said that data protection was part of MoU and the company could not share the data with a third party, and issues of secrecy and privacy is protected under the IT Act.
