After a three-month probe in the phone tapping controversy, a single-member Commission submitted its report to Chief Minister M Karunanidhi on Monday, though the details of it are not known yet.
A seemingly ordinary conversation between Chief Secretary L K Tripathy and Chief Vigilance Commissioner S K Upadhyay was published by an English daily here in April, along with the report that the phones of several leaders were being tapped by the state.
In the recorded conversation, the officials were heard discussing a case related to the Kodanadu Estate owned by Opposition leader J Jayalalithaa.
Some of the numbers that the daily claimed were being tapped included that of PMK founder and staunch DMK baiter S Ramadoss, senior journalists and academicians. Ramadoss took up the issue and had raised the allegation against the state Government several times in the past.
The Government soon formed a committee to find the source of tapping and also that of the leak, entrusting the task on P Shanmugam, a retired justice of the Madras High Court. In the past three months since its formation, the committee summoned several persons including journalists who reported the issue.
In the meanwhile, Janata Party president Subramaniam Swamy came out with a tape that had the conversation between then Social Welfare Minister Dr Poongothai Aladi Aruna and Upadhyay, in which the Minister was heard asking the official to go easy on her relative who was caught in a bribery case.
Admitting that it was indeed her voice, Poongothai tendered resignation after the incident, while the Government forwarded the case to the same commission.
... contd.