Thiruvananthapuram: Senior Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala on Friday levelled fresh allegations against the Chief Minister's Office (CMO), accusing it of illegally accessing and misusing the personal data of women enrolled under the Sthree Suraksha scheme.

Addressing the media, Chennithala once again claimed that the Chief Minister's Officer on Special Duty, Sriram Sambasiva Rao, had violated data protection norms. The Congress leader also shared a letter dated February 7, 2026, at the news conference as evidence to support his allegations.

Chennithala said that personal details of women enrolled under the Sthree Suraksha scheme were accessed and used for election-related campaigns. According to him, information such as names, phone numbers, age, gender, district, taluk and ward details had been shared without consent.

Chennithala further claimed that a Mumbai-based private agency had been engaged for sending bulk messages through social media platforms. He questioned how such large-scale data was accessed and shared, and alleged that the state government was responsible for compromising citizens' privacy.

Meanwhile, the Kerala High Court on Tuesday orally observed that bulk WhatsApp messages sent to government employees and members of the judiciary through the CMO appeared to be an intrusion into privacy.

Justice Bechu Kurian Thomas made the observation while hearing a petition alleging that the CMO illegally accessed mobile phone numbers and email IDs of government employees and judges to send messages as part of an election campaign.

According to the petitioners, the phone numbers were unlawfully extracted from data submitted by employees on the SPARK portal. The petition was filed by Advocate George Poonthottam on behalf of Rasheed Ahammed, Associate Professor at KTM College, Malappuram, and Anil Kumar K M, clerical assistant at the Government Secretariat.

The court granted the state time till Friday to explain how the phone numbers were obtained and to establish that they were collected legally. It also recorded the state’s undertaking that no similar bulk messages would be sent until then.