When Congress-led govts spied on veteran leaders, together with their very own

Leftwing portal The Wire on Sunday shared an inventory of 40 Indian journalists which it claimed have been being snooped upon with a assist of Israeli spy ware known as Pegasus.
The Indian authorities in its response trashed the report, stating that the allegations made within the report are based mostly on conjectures and uncorroborated theories. Earlier as we speak, the NSO Group, which owns the Pegasus spy ware stated it’s contemplating submitting defamation towards The Wire for making outrageous allegations towards them.
While the leftist on-line portal is lengthy identified for publishing prejudicial content material towards the Modi authorities, usually with out finishing up due diligence, the tenuous allegations of snooping has however dropped at highlight the time when Congress governments on the Centre used surveillance as a software to maintain a tab on politicians, together with its personal leaders.
RTI response reveals UPA-II surveilled greater than 9,000 telephones and 500 electronic mail accounts
A response to an RTI filed in 2013 revealed that the UPA authorities on the Centre was carefully monitoring 9,000 telephones and 500 electronic mail accounts, a report printed in Newsroom Post says. The response was to an RTI filed by one Prosenjit Mondal.
The RTI reply says: “On an average, between 7,500 to 9,000 orders for the interception of telephones and 300 to 500 orders for the interception of emails are issued by Central Government per month whereas.”
Under the UPA authorities, not 10 or 20 however 9000 telephones have been tapped each month. This not solely included eminent people however even their very own leaders, together with veteran Congress chief Pranab Mukherjee.
Congress-led authorities snooped on allies in addition to its personal leaders, together with then FM Pranab Mukherjee
In January 2006, firebrand politician Amar Singh, the then common secretary of the Samajwadi Party, alleged that the Manmohan Singh authorities that got here in energy in 2004 had tapped his cellphone. Following the allegations made by Singh, different politicians reminiscent of Sitaram Yechury, Jayalalithaa, CB Naidu and so on. additionally made comparable allegations towards the UPA authorities.
However, probably the most fascinating half about this incident is the response given by former PM Manmohan Singh. He stated that the cellphone tapping was not finished by his authorities however by a personal company. Later, a person named Bhupinder Singh was additionally arrested within the case.
Almost 4 later, in October 2009, the then Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee accused the CPM authorities in West Bengal of snooping on her. Banerjee’s allegations as soon as once more rekindled the controversy surrounding the Centre’s use of surveillance towards its opponents and different social gathering leaders. The then Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had then stated that the federal government would come out clear on the allegations of snooping. However, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh rejected the demand for a JPC within the matter.
A 12 months later, in December 2010, PM Singh defended his authorities’s transfer to faucet telephones of company honchos. He cited grounds of nationwide safety, stopping tax evasion and cash laundering as the explanations to justify cellphone tapping. The following day, he reportedly requested his cabinet secretary to look into the cellphone tapping case and fortify the authorized framework to stop such leaks.
In June 2011, the then finance minister Pranab Mukherjee wrote a letter to the PM asking him to conduct a secret inquiry into the bugging of his workplace. According to the reviews, Mukherjee suspected that considered one of his cabinet colleagues was liable for bugging his workplace.
Earlier final month, a Congress MLA in Rajasthan accused chief minister Ashok Gehlot of tapping his cellphone. Congress MLA from Chaksu in Rajasthan’s Dausa district, Ved Prakash Solanki stated ‘many officials’ advised him that the telephones of legislators have been being tapped. There are additionally efforts underway to “trap” MLAs, Solanki had alleged then.