Whistleblower Christopher Wylie said on Wednesday that political data analytics company Cambridge Analytica and the SCL Group have worked on several projects in India and have offices there.
Wylie tweeted a list of projects the SCL Group has undertaken in India since 2003, beginning with the Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. The British behavioural research company’s Indian arm carried out surveys of voters for Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) during the 2010 Bihar Assembly elections, as well as for a “major political party” during the 2007 polls in Uttar Pradesh.
The data, which was purportedly taken from the SCL Group website, also showed the company has a database of 600 districts and seven lakh villages.
In the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, SCL India managed the campaigns of several unidentified senior political leaders. In 2012, the organisation carried out a caste census in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh on behalf of a political party. The previous year, it had launched a nationwide campaign to identify voter caste by household.
On Tuesday, Cambridge Analytica had said that Wylie made false and speculative claims to a British parliamentary panel. The firm said the former employee had “misrepresented himself and the company”.
The company is accused of using the private data of more than five crore Facebook users to influence voters during the 2016 presidential elections in the United States. Speaking to the British MPs on Tuesday, Wylie described the alleged role of Cambridge Analytica and other such companies in elections round the world, including the Brexit campaign and the 2016 elections in the United States.
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