Centre says Opposition is overreacting

The government on Monday countered the Opposition’s charge of snooping on Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, stating in both Houses of Parliament that it was making a “mountain out of what is not even a molehill.”

The Centre stated that the exercise was part of a transparent security profiling of 526 VIPs, including Congress president Sonia Gandhi and former prime ministers.

In the Rajya Sabha, the issue was raised by Leader of the Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad who said Rahul had been a SPG protectee since his father Rajiv Gandhi became prime minister and it was “beyond comprehension” why the police was now collecting such information. His senior party colleague Anand Sharma accused the government of tapping phones of political leaders, judges and others through imported devices and demanded an inquiry monitored by the Supreme Court.

Samajwadi Party MPs Naresh Agarwal and Ramgopal Yadav and Janata Dal-United (JD-U) MP K C Tyagi also spoke of “snooping and spying” on the government’s political opponents.

Responding to their charges, Leader of the House and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the police have been collecting such information since 1987 on VIPs operating out of Lutyens Delhi through a proforma as part of security profiling.

The proforma, which was revised in 1999, has been used to profile former prime ministers H D Deve Gowda, I K Gujral, Manmohan Singh and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The same was also used to profile Sonia in October 2004, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012, the finance minister said.

President Pranab Mukherjee was profiled in 2001, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2012, while senior BJP leaders L K Advani and Sushma Swaraj, Ahmed Patel of the Congress, Communist Party of India-Marxist’s Sitaram Yechury and JD-U chief Sharad Yadav were also profiled, he said.

“Nearly 526 people have been profiled using the present form,” Jaitley said, adding that this was part of a “transparent, security profiling and not associated with any kind of snooping or spying.”

“It is not that it has been started in the last 8 months,” he said and proposed to sit with Azad to go through the 526 forms filled during the United Progressive Alliance regime.

On the proforma seeking information on shoe size, colour of eyes and other such information, Jaitley said former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was identified by his shoes after his assassination.

Security needs and profiling should be left to security experts and “we should not attempt to become one,” the minister said. Jaitley said the practice of security profiling started in 1987 under the Congress rule. Later, Congress members, including former prime minister Manmohan Singh, staged a walkout in the Rajya Sabha when Deputy Chairman P J Kurien rejected their demand of suspension of business to debate the issue.

Leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge wanted to bring in an adjournment motion to discuss the issue and Speaker Sumitra Mahajan rejected it. The Speaker also said that the issue, though important, could be raised during Zero Hour.

Kharge accused the government of “pursuing the Gujarat model of governance by snooping on political opponents.” Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said that the police have been carrying out routine checks as per the practice followed since 1957.

The Congress complained that after an assistant sub-inspector of the special branch of the Delhi Police visited Rahul’s 12, Tughlaq Lane, residence on March 2, two senior officers again visited his place on March 14 to gather information on his aides.
DH News Service