House session likely to be stormy today

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesman Rajiv Pratap Rudy said it seems that UPA Government is heading for a landmark scandal and demanded the suspension of Question Hour in both the houses of Parliament on Monday to discuss it.

He said the BJP would also ask the Government to set up a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to investigate the matter. “It is a shameful event which has shocked the nation and the silence of the Government is deafening”, he said.

Senior BJP leader L K Advani demanded that a new legislation should be made in place of the outdated Indian Telephone Act to protect citizens’ privacy. Is the Emergency back? the senior BJP leader wondered on his blog on the issue.

It is a “shocking report describing how the Government of India has been making use of the latest phone tapping technology to prepare records of telephonic conversations of prominent political leaders, including chief ministers like Nitish Kumar, Union ministers like Sharad Pawar, communist leaders like Prakash Karat and the Congress party’s own office bearers like its general secretary Digvijay Singh,” Advani posted in the blog.

CPM leader in the Lok Sabha, Basudeb Acharia said the party would demand that the Prime Minister make a statement on the issue.

“The Question Hour should be suspended and the issue should be discussed. I will ask the Prime Minister to make a statement,” Acharia said.

The allegations of phone-tapping, made in a report by news magazine, come at a time when the Congress is already battling the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket storm that has led to the exit of one minister and cast a shadow on two others, including Pawar. These allegations also precede the crucial vote in Parliament on the General Budget for 2010-11.

The Opposition has been threatening to introduce cut motions in the Lok Sabha in a bid to defeat the Finance Bill, a development that could seriously embarrass the Congress-led UPA government.