New Delhi, Dec 14 (IANS) Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Tuesday said wiretaps were needed to protect homeland security but must be allowed with utmost care, while BJP leader L.K. Advani charged that the leaked chats of Niira Radia suggested that the government was run by corporate lobbyists.
‘I am aware of the nervousness in the corporate sector arising out of powers conferred upon the government authorities to tap the phones for protecting national security and preventing tax evasion and money laundering,’ said Manmohan Singh.
‘While these powers are needed, they have to be exercised with utmost care, under well defined rules, procedures and mechanism so that they are not misused,’ he said at the inaugural event of the India Corporate Week hosted by the ministry of corporate affairs.
‘I am asking the cabinet secretary (K.M. Chandrasekhar) to look into these issues and report back to the cabinet within the next month,’ the prime minister said.
Elsewhere, Advani took a dig at both the prime minister and Congress party president Sonia Gandhi over some of the leaked transcripts of the wiretaps on Radia.
Tata group chairman Ratan Tata has voiced reservations over the leakage to the media of his tapped conversations with corporate lobbyist Radia — over which he also moved the Supreme Court.
‘How they talk, the lobbyists of big, big business houses,’ Advani said, referring to Radia’s telephonic talk with industrialists and journalists. ‘It looks as if the prime minister does not constitute this government.’
The veteran politician said his party was under the impression that Sonia Gandhi decided the Manmohan Singh government’s agenda.
‘Now we realise even the Congress president does not form the government. Look at the people speaking with such authority, who are deciding who should get what portfolio.’
Reacting to the statement by the prime minister that the government will seek to prevent leakage of tapped telephonic conversations, Advani asked: ‘Are these matters the prime minister should be worried about?’
‘We know that the prime minister is not even aware of various things happening in his own cabinet.’
Radia’s phone, according to a government affidavit in the Supreme Court, was initially tapped following a complaint that she was allegedly a foreign spy and had amassed Rs.300 crore in a span of just nine years.
Later, the scope and duration of the wiretap were extended when some conversations were found ‘sensitive’ in the matter of relating to award of airwaves to telecom companies, the affidavit said.
The award of telecom airwaves is being termed a major scandal by the opposition, which stalled proceedings of the entire winter session of parliament demanding a probe into it by a joint parliamentary panel.
DMK leader A. Raja had to resign as communications minister last month when the official audit institution indicted him in what is called the second generation (2G) spectrum scam.
The Comptroller and Auditor General of India had said Raja’s policy had caused a notional loss of billions of rupees to the exchequer by resorting to giving airwaves to telecom companies on a first-come-first-served basis rather than through an auction.
Advani made it clear that no one wanted another Lok Sabha election now and speculation about it was the handiwork of the Congress.
‘It’s only scare-mongering. To scare the MPs and to break the opposition unity,’ he said.
‘The mid-term talks have come from ministers, whom I do not want to mention. They know a parliament was elected one-and-a-half years back. Why would an average MP elected for five years like to curtail his tenure?’
