A day after he claimed his phone was being tapped by the State government, JD(S) supremo H D Deve Gowda on Wednesday continued his diatribe against the Siddaramaiah government, stating that all governments were known to tap phones.

An irked Siddaramaiah shot back saying Gowda was making false claims. “The State government is not tapping Gowda’s phone – I don’t have any information about this. Time and again he has been making this false allegation,” he said.
Gowda had made the allegation in Mysuru on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, Siddaramaiah, who spoke to reporters, said the former prime minister should stop misleading the people by making false statements.

“As a former prime minister, he should make responsible statements. He cannot be talking like this without any proof,” he said. He said the government had handed over the probe into the lottery racket to the CBI, and that he would write a detailed letter to the prime minister about it.

Following these statements by Siddaramaiah, Gowda held a press conference and said he was well aware that his phone was being tapped. “Phones have been tapped by all governments. When efforts were being made to dislodge me as the prime minister, the intelligence wing was the first to alert me that my phone was being tapped,” he said.

He claimed he had never termed the CBI the ‘Chor bachao Samsthe’. He said more scams by the Congress government would be unearthed soon, and that he and his son should focus their struggle on them.

Gowda said he wasn’t upset that Siddaramaiah had said that it was a tragedy that he had become the prime minister. “During my tenure, there were no allegations against me; and till today, I am continuing my struggle,” he added.

Asking his son H D Kumaraswamy to be patient, he said he had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to order a probe into the alleged Nice irregularities, but was yet to receive a response from him.