#CambridgeAnalytica: NDTV’s exclusive interview puts BJP and Congress in the spotlight

Both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Indian National Congress have gone to town claiming that they have had no relations with the controversial data consultant firm Cambridge Analytica (CA) and its subsidiaries. But ‘news developments’ in the case aren’t helping them. The latest comes from NDTV’s interview with a business partner of Alexander Nix, CA’s suspended chief executive officer.

NDTV’s editor Sreenivasan Jain spoke to Avneesh Rai, one of the directors of Strategic Communications Laboratories Private Limited (SCL). The firm was incorporated in November 2011, with Rai, Nix and Amrish Tyagi (son of Janta Dal United leader KC Tyagi) and Alexander Waddington Oakes as its directors. While Nix was the CEO of CA, Tyagi leads its Indian arm – Ovleno Business Intelligence.

In the interview, Rai claimed that he along with Nix had formed the company to create demographic profiling of voters and pitch it to political parties. However, there were differences when Nix insisted to host voter data, collected through the company’s application, on a US server instead of the India server as was decided in the beginning. According to Rai, initially the data was being gathered to pitch to the Congress Party, which was in power at the Centre. However, they were yet to have any client on board.

“We had planned to collect data of five constituencies [Lok Sabha] – including two from Rajasthan, one from Bihar and Amethi and Raebareli and gift it to Rahul Gandhi,” Rai told Jain. He added that one of the company representatives “an NRI woman” possibly of “Gujarati” origin said, “I am from the client’s side [representing the client]” and she later said, “we are here to defeat the Congress.”

When Rai questioned Nix about this mystery deal, he replied “we are here to make money”.

In this interview, Rai claimed that Indian arm of CA led by Tyagi supplied election data to the BJP for 2012 Uttar Pradesh elections. He said this data was handed over to BJP leaders such Sanjay Joshi and Narendra Tomar. Interestingly, he claimed that “booth-level voter data of 200 constituencies” was given to BJP for which the company was paid.

Rai stated that he had worked with the Samajwadi Party and was in touch with BJP’s Mahesh Sharma during the 2009 election.