New Delhi: Cambridge Analytica’s India affiliate, Ovleno Business Intelligence (OBI) issued a statement on Thursday saying they “are equally shocked and surprised” at the data breach controversy. Both Congress and BJP have engaged in a bitter war of words since Wednesday for allegedly using the services of OBI and Cambridge Analytica for electoral gains amid a global outcry over data breach by the UK-based firm.
OBI Vice-President Himanshu Sharma, in his first reaction since the controversy blew up on Wednesday, said, “We are not denying our association with SCL/Cambridge Analytica but we are a ground research company closely working with various media houses and not undertake any project with CA related to social media (especially Facebook).”
“We are equally shocked and surprised to see the data breach controversy and we are also looking to end our association with them,” added Sharma.
Cambridge Analytica, the firm at the centre of the row over illegal mining of Facebook data to influence elections, claims to have worked in India during the 2010 Bihar Assembly Elections on its website, but did not spell out which party hired it.
OBI’s website, that has been suspended now, had the names of BJP, Congress and Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) as its clients, while Sharma’s LinkedIn profile boasted of “successfully managing” the electoral campaigns of BJP and JDU in the 2014 General Elections and 2010 Bihar Assembly elections.
“We again want to clarify that neither the whistle blower nor Facebook has confirmed that there is any kind of data breach in India,” read Sharma’s statement.
Ovleno is a firm run by Amit Tyagi, the son of JDU leader KC Tyagi.
News18 managed to take screenshots from the website of Ovleno Business Intelligence before it was taken down. OBI is a part of the joint venture of SCL (Strategic Communications Laboratories) India. SCL is the parent company of Cambridge Analytica.
The website of OBI said that it works on “political campaign management” and had photos of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Delhi Chief Arvind Kejriwal on its homepage. However, the company did not list Aam Aadmi Party as its client.
The Congress has alleged that OBI’s services were used by home minister Rajnath Singh in 2009. BJP, too, held multiple press conferences on Wednesday to pull up Congress for its alleged involvement with OBI.
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