New Delhi: An enraged opposition forced a day-long adjournment of both houses of parliament yesterday demanding a statement by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh over the alleged tapping of phones of political leaders.
Federal Home Minister P. Chidambaram's identical statement in both houses was lost in the din, although the minister categorically said neither the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government nor the present UPA government had authorised tapping of phones of some key leaders.
The weekly Outlook magazine in its latest issue alleged that the phones of Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Communist Party of India-Marxist and federal Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar were tapped by the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO), using new technology.
NTRO is an intelligence agency that was set up following the 1999 Kargil war to effectively gather information with the use of sophisticated gadgets through which it can tap landline phones, mobile phones and e-mails.
The magazine alleged in its report that while the phones of Singh and Kumar were tapped in 2007 and that of Karat in 2008 at the height of his opposition to the Indo-US nuclear deal, Pawar's phone was tapped and taped two weeks back in the wake of the Indian Premier League (IPL) controversy.
Joint probe
Although the government denied authorising tapping of phones, it is widely believed that it was the transcript of Pawar's talks with IPL chairman Lalit Modi that forced Pawar to withdraw his support to Modi, who was ousted from the post yesterday by the Board of Control for Cricket in India.
In a related development, the government has declined the opposition demand for a Joint Parliamentary Committee probe in the IPL controversy after names of Pawar and another minister from his Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) Praful Patel came up as being involved in the IPL controversy.
Chidambaram said the government has investigated the matter and found nothing to substantiate the allegations reported in a weekly magazine.
"I wish to state categorically that no telephone tapping or eavesdropping of political leaders was authorised by the previous UPA government. Nor has the present UPA government authorised any such activity. After the issue of the magazine was available late on Friday, the allegations in the story were thoroughly inquired into. Nothing has been found in the records to substantiate the allegations," Chidambaram said amid noisy scenes.
