Pranab,the No. 2,insecure… shows UPA mistrust,probe his office breach: Opposition

As reported by The Indian Express on Tuesday,the Finance Minister wrote a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in September last year urging him to order a secret inquiry into what he called a “serious breach of security” — “planted adhesives” at 16 key locations in his office,suggesting a possible surveillance attempt. No live microphone or recording device had been found,Mukherjee had told the PM.

“In respect of the news item,IB (the Intelligence Bureau) investigated into it and they found there is nothing,” Mukherjee told reporters today.

As The Indian Express had reported,the Intelligence Bureau had downplayed the concern saying the adhesives were “sort of a chewing gum”. However,the Central Board of Direct Taxes — it reports to Mukherjee — had called in a team of private investigators who first detected these adhesives.

CBDT officials told The Indian Express that they found it hard to believe that chewing gum would be in so many locations. Moreover,they said that grooves had been visible on the surface of these adhesives suggesting that devices could have been planted and later pulled out.

Calling it a “serious matter,” the BJP and the Left asked the government to spell out who was behind the “spying”. Calling it an “insider job”,the BJP said it indicates that the high “trust deficit” within the UPA government.

Swaraj said the news report about bugging of the Finance Minister’s office was shocking. Claiming that the chewing gum theory was hard to digest,she said: “Is it that the government was spying on its own Finance Minister? Or is it a corporate house? In either case,it is a matter of grave concern. It is India’s Watergate and needs to be thoroughly investigated,” she tweeted.

She said the Finance Minister may have his own compulsions of playing it down. The BJP also questioned the Finance Ministry’s decision to rope in a “private detective agency” instead of entrusting the task to the Home Ministry.

“Mukherjee is No 2 in the UPA government and the Leader of the Lok Sabha. If his office is not safe,then whose office is safe in this country?” BJP spokesman Shahnawaz Hussain said. “If the government has conducted a probe,what are its findings? Have they got any bugging devices at Mukherjee’s office? Everything should come out,” he said.

NCP general secretary and chief spokesman D P Tripathi said: “Let there be a secret probe. What Pranab Mukherjee has demanded is right.” Congress spokesperson Jayanthi Natarajan said that Mukherjee had already responded to it and the party has nothing to add.

CPI National Secretary D Raja said the government owed an explanation to the nation. “That the Finance Minister himself has taken up the matter with the Prime Minister shows that it was a very serious issue. We all would like know who does the Finance Minister and the Government suspect and what action have they taken or propose to take,” he said.

BJP’s Ravi Shankar Prasad said the country is entitled to know the truth behind the episode. “If it was done from across the border,then it is a very serious matter relating to national security… On the other hand,if it is an insider job,it is all the worse as it only indicates the trust deficit within the Government.”

“While on the one hand,the UPA is engaged in a war with civil society,a civil war is on between Ministers. Every Minister is out to claim that he is better than the others and is running down the others…There is also a suspicion that the phones of those in the Opposition are being tracked,” said Hussain.