Government’s legislative programme now hostage to the latest upset on its alleged snooping.
Phone-tapping or IPL? These are the issues that have agonised the government managers through the weekend as the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) braces itself for another tough week of Parliament.
On Friday, the government thought the net fallout of the IPL controversy would probably rock Parliament for a day — this Tuesday (the crucial IPL and BCCI governing council meetings are scheduled for Monday) — and then it would be business as usual in the two houses, with the Finance Bill and other budget related business being cleared by the end of the week.
This is the assurance Parliamentary Affairs Minister V Narayanaswamy gave Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee during a meeting on Friday.
In fact, government managers had also revealed that should there be any unpleasant incidents on the floor of the House, contingency plans for support had already been made. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)’s agreeing in the Supreme Court that they would take a look at UP Chief Minister Mayawati’s Disproportionate Assets (DA) cases dating back to 2002-03 and 2007-08, was a clue to the government’s new allies.
In January, CBI had said it was ready to launch prosecution proceedings against the UP chief minister. The Income Tax Department had initially asked Mayawati how her income went up to Rs 50 crore in 2007 from Rs 1 crore in 2000. Her reply was that this was the result of ‘gifts’ to her by supporters. She quickly changed her mind and termed her assets as income and announced she was ready to pay tax on it. However, CBI persisted with the case and announced it would proceed with charges in consonance with the Prevention of Corruption Act. Earlier this week, however, CBI said it would “look into” her representation. It is clear the CBI chargesheet, at least for now, is being kept in abeyance. In return, the Bahujan Samaj Party may vote in favour of or abstain in the Finance Bill vote.
However, the revelation in Outlook magazine that telephones of several top Congress and Opposition politicians were being tapped, has upset the government’s applecart.
Not only did the UPA’s erstwhile ally, the CPI(M), criticise the phone tapping charge made by the magazine, BJP leader LK Advani attacked the government on his blog and demanded enactment of a new legislation to protect citizens' privacy.
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 conversations of prominent political leaders, including chief ministers like Nitish Kumar, Union ministers like Sharad Pawar, Communist leaders like Prakash Karat and the Congress's own office bearers like general secretary Digvijay Singh,” said Advani.
"What is really required in this context is to set up a parliamentary committee on the lines of the Birkett committee in Britain to examine all aspects of the problem, scrap the outdated Indian Telephone Act of 1885 and replace it by a new legislation, which forbids invasion of an ordinary citizen's privacy,” he added.
The senior leader said a new law should formally recognise the right of the state to use the latest IT devices of interception to deal only with crime, subversion and espionage. “The law must provide statutory safeguards, which make it impossible for the government to abuse its powers against political activists and journalists,” he said.
Recalling an incident, Advani said, "This reminds me of an interesting encounter I had 25 years ago. In 1985, one morning a stranger arrived at my house carrying a briefcase full of papers. ‘This brief case,’ he told me, ‘contains dynamite, which could blow up this government’. He opened his briefcase and out poured some 200 sheets of closely-typed records of telephonic conversations of many VIPs." Advani did not find these 'explosive', as that gentleman had presumed. Some of those papers were telephonic conversations between him and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, he said.
"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," he said.
Advani's blog mentioned several incidents of phone tapping in the past, including the press conference of June 25, 1985, on the 10th anniversary of the Emergency, by Vajpayee. He said Vajpayee had then referred to large-scale phone tapping during the 19 months of Emergency.
It is clear that with this issue, the Opposition is going to have a field day in Parliament for the next few days.
