BJP alleges tapping of Advani's phone

After the Samajwadi Party, it is now the turn of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to allege that the telephones of its former President LK Advani and other senior leaders have been tapped, especially during the period when the Iraqi oil scam broke out.

"According to information, many telephones of several senior party leaders were tapped during the Volcker controversy," BJP spokesman Prakash Javadekar said. He said the government should come clean on the issue.

BJP Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu had made similar allegations in Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh yesterday.

"We have received information from different sources that the telephones of some senior leaders, including that of our party president, have been under surveillance at some point or the other. Their phones have been tapped in the past," Javadekar said.

Advani remained non-committal on the issue, only saying that he had been "told" that his phone had been tapped and that he was yet to ascertain whether this information was correct or not.

"If it is true, then I can only say that this government is very much like the regime which had imposed Emergency on the country in 1975," he said.

BJP President Rajnath Singh, too, said that the matter was serious. "This is a serious issue and it should be investigated. All political parties should sit together and decide on the format of the probe in which all of them believe," said Singh.

When specifically asked whether he preferred any particular mode of investigation, Singh said, "Any probe that has the trust of all political parties." BJP Deputy Leader in the Lok Sabha VK Malhotra had demanded a probe by a joint parliamentary committee. Privately, several BJP leaders see this as another "Watergate".

The issue is expected to become bigger in the next few days and the BJP says that it has proof that phones have been tapped. Singh indicated that the party had known for some time that the phones of BJP leaders were being tapped, but had managed to verify this only yesterday.