New Delhi: The UPA government is on the backfoot as it is seeking to secure support of the allies ahead of a cut motion in Parliament over high food prices. The government is preparing for a showdown with the BJP and the rest of the Opposition on the issue.
And faced with the possibility of a trial of strength, the UPA has issued a whip to its members. The phone tapping expose is the latest ammunition for the Opposition, after price rise and the IPL.
The main Opposition party BJP says democracy needs to be defended and demands a statement from the Prime Minister on the phone-tapping controversy. UPA sources tell CNN IBN that no orders for tapping phones were given.
Senior BJP leader and party spokesman Rajiv Pratap Rudy said: "We thought that the Prime Minister will refrain from such actions, phone tapping even done on the Cabinet ministers."
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar also demanded an explanation from the Government.
"If such phone tapping equipment is brought into the country, then there must be proper rules for their use. The government must clarify," said Kumar.
BJP and the Left parties are demanding suspension of Question Hour and a statement from the Prime Minister on the issue. Sources say the government is likely to make a statement in Parliament clarifying its stand.
The Government is expected to deny that phones of Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, CPM General Secretary Prakash Karat, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, and Congress's Digvijay Singh were tapped or that it gave orders to this effect.
The government is likely to insist that no authorisation was given for the phone tap and there's no evidence to suggest that the phones were tapped. The BJP is demanding a Joint Parliamentary Committee probe into the matter.
Accirding to Supreme Court guidelines the Union Home Secretary or home secretary of a state has to approve if a phone needs to be tapped. In an emergency order can be passed by a Joint Secretary of Home Department. An order for tapping is valid for two months unless renewed and tapping must be restricted to person mentioned in the order. The intercepted material must be destroyed later. The guidelines also say that a review committee is responsible for monitoring whether tapping was for national security or not.
According to Outlook magazine, the phone tapping was done by the National Technical Research Organisation, an intelligence unit created after the Kargil war to foil terrorist designs.
What tapping revealed:
A report in Outlook says senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh's conversations on candidates for CWC election in Punjab in February 2007 were tapped apart from that of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on how to get more funds for Bihar from the Centre and and the projects on Kosi river in October 2007. CPM leader Prakash Karat's phone was being tapped to get info about the Opposition's plans regarding Indo-US nuke deal in July 2008. And senior NCP leader and Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar's conversations with IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi on inside deals struck during the IPL team bidding were also being tapped in April 2010.
However, Digvijay Singh has rejected the report saying, "I know that the Madhya Pradesh government taps my phone. I have no problem with it. I don't believe this story because Manmohan Singh's government cannot do such an unethical and illegal task."
Senior BJP leader L K Advani, however, does not trust the government. He said the magazine's report was "shocking" and reminded him of the Emergency. It is a "shocking report describing how the Government of India has been making use of the latest phone tapping technology to prepare records of telephonic conversations of prominent political leaders including Chief Ministers like Nitish Kumar, Union Ministers like Sharad Pawar, Communist leaders like Prakash Karat and the Congress party's own office bearers like its General Secretary, Digvijay Singh," said Advani in his blog on Sunday.
"This reminds me of an interesting encounter I had 25 years back. In 1985, one morning a stranger arrived at my house carrying a brief case full of papers. This brief case, he told me, contained 'dynamite' which could blow up this Government. He opened his brief case and out poured some 200 sheets of closely typed records of telephonic conversations of many VIPS.
"Some of those papers were telephonic conversations which I had had with Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee. What surprised me even more was that those transcripts included tape-recorded conversations not only of Opposition leaders but also of eminent journalists and some extremely distinguished VVIPs like Gyani Zail Singh.
Advani's blog, titled Is the Emergency back, demanded that a new legislation be enacted to protect citizens' privacy. CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat has called the tapping of telephones as 'illegal and intolerable". "The UPA government has to own up responsibility and take action against those responsible," he said on Saturday.
The Opposition plans to press the government for a joint parliamentary probe into the allegations.
Comments
0 comment