New Delhi:
Home Minister P Chidambaram guaranteed on Thursday that the government has not sanctioned the tapping of phones of any politicians. He said the government is investigating the possibility of politicians and others being subjected to unauthorized phone tapping.
Chidambaram stated in the Rajya Sabha that the government is committed to the right to privacy of all citizens and that it will consider new laws to further protect that right.
Media reports, the first of them in Outlook magazine, revealed that phones of senior leaders like Sharad Pawar, Digvijay Singh, Nitish Kumar, and Prakash Karat were intercepted using equipment available with the National Technical Research Organization (NTRO), the government's technical intelligence-gathering agency.
The NTRO currently reports to the National Security Advisor in the Prime Minister's office. Chidambaram said he has proposed to the Prime Minister that the NTRO be asked to report instead to a minister who will be accountable to Parliament.
Chidambaram said that the Prime Minister has directed the government to "get to the bottom" of the phone-tapping controversy."
The discussion in Parliament also touched upon the issues brought up by a report in the newspaper, The Pioneer, which alleged that the phone of the woman who heads one of India's largest public relations companies was tapped while she lobbied for her corporate clients to be awarded 2G spectrum licenses in 2008. Chidambaram said that he could not comment on whether the article was correct.
However, he stated, in some cases, the government is "entitled to intercept such conversations if they relate to tax evasion or any commercial transaction which deserves to be investigated."
Earlier, the BJP's Arun Jaitley had argued that mere suspicion of tax evasion cannot be equated with 'public safety' and 'public emergency' - the only two situations which allow the government to intercept messages. (
Read: BJP attacks government over phone-tapping)