BJP accuses UPA government of misusing IB

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Friday accused the UPA government of misusing the Intelligence Bureau for political gains, saying the agency is made to withdraw affidavits as and when the home minister changes.

BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman said the party has cautioned repeatedly that the misuse of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) was rampant under the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government.

"We fear the Intelligence Bureau too is being misused by the UPA government," she said.

Sitharaman said the IB shares critical intelligence with the states and an outcome of such arrangement was witnessed on June 15, 2004, when four terrorists including Isharat Jahan and Pranesh Pillai alias Javed Sheikh were killed. "The Gujarat Police acted on IB information about their movements," she said.

"Within a month of that incident, the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) claimed Ishrat as its operative. However, in July 2007 they declared that their claim was a 'journalistic mistake' and withdrew the same.

"But in 2010, media reported that David Headley, the brain behind the Mumbai terror attack implicated Ishrat as a 'fideyeen' of the LeT. Strangely, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) under the UPA government denied these media reports," Sitharaman said.

Referring to summons to a senior IB official by the CBI in the encounter case, she said a CBI inspector would now go into all the factors leading to IB's sharing of information with the state police.

"This raises the serious issue of how national security related issues are being viewed. For serving short-term political agenda, issues of national security are being compromised. This can lead to indiscriminate criticism in some sections."

She said the IB was being "made to withdraw affidavits from the courts as and when the home minister was being changed".

"Attributing political motives or tweaking the prosecutions' stated positions which are based on evidence and facts of a case can compromise our national security itself," she added.

"The BJP cautions the Congress that misusing the IB for political gains may affect our national security itself," the BJP spokesperson said.