New Delhi: The Union government has moved around 16.68 lakh official email accounts to Zoho, a cloud-based platform launched by billionaire Sridar Vembu, at a cost of Rs 180.10 crore to the exchequer, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) told the Lok Sabha on April 1.The migration has come amid widespread criticism of entrusting a private company with critical national digital infrastructure and undermining its own National Informatics Centre (NIC).Critics have argued that the migration implies that the government’s own technology institutions are incapable of building a cloud-based email solution for official use.NIC picked Zoho through a government e-Marketplace (GeM-CPPP) bidding process, including a proof of concept conducted with shortlisted bidders and government user groups, moneycontrol reported.The price of migrating an email account ranges between Rs170-300 depending on the storage capacity associated with the account, the report said.In December, the Union government had said a little over 12 lakh email accounts has been moved to Zoho, of which 7.45 lakh belonged to Union government employees.One argument made in favour of picking Zoho is that it would prevent government employees from using open-source applications – a justification critics say is counterintuitive and reflects a misunderstanding of digital security needs. Governments worldwide are moving towards open-source software for critical functions, precisely because – unlike proprietary solutions from Zoho, Microsoft, or Google – its code is publicly visible and can be independently audited by bodies like CERT-In for vulnerabilities and hidden backdoors.Critics have also called out the government’s conflation between ‘Indian’ and ‘sovereign’. While Zoho is an Indian company, it remains a for-profit organisation obligated to its stakeholders. The NIC, on the other hand, serves public interest and could have been entrusted with developing its own email solution with the help of government funding and indigenous talent.