A miffed Congress Party sought answers from the NDA Government in Parliament on Monday over the visit of Delhi Police officials to the party office to seek details of Rahul Gandhi's physical appearance.
13:11 IST Monday, 16 March 2015
Delhi Police Commissioner BS Bassi has ruled out any malafide intention with regard to the inquiry about Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's whereabouts and added that the men in uniform did not initiate this step on the Central Government's orders.
13:00 IST Monday, 16 March 2015
In the Lok Sabha, where the BJP is in a majority, Leader of Congress party Mallikarjun Kharge demanded an official response from PM Narendra Modi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh on the 'snooping' issue. He claimed that this was an issue that concerned not just Rahul Gandhi but also other MPs.
Meanwhile, BSP chief Mayawati said that though the procedure of profiling was familiar, the way in which it had been done in Rahul Gandhi's absence raised doubts.
11:40 IST Monday, 16 March 2015
Government on Monday countered the Congress charges of snooping on Rahul Gandhi saying it was making a "mountain out of what is not even a molehill" as information collection was part of a transparent security profiling used on 526 VIPs, including Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Ministers.
Responding to charges of snooping and spying on political opponents by Opposition Congress and SP in Rajya Sabha, Leader of the House Arun Jaitley said the police has been collecting such information since 1987 on VIPs operating out of Lutyens Delhi through a profoma form as part of security profiling.
The proforma, which was revised in 1999, has been used to profile former prime ministers H D Dewa Gowda, I K Gujral, Manmohan Singh and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The same was also used to profile Congress President Sonia Gandhi in October 2004, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012, the Finance Minister said.
Pranab Mukherjee, before becoming the President, was profiled in 2001, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2012, while senior BJP leaders L K Advani and Sushma Swaraj, Ahmed Patel of Congress, CPI(M)'s Sitaram Yechury and Sharad Yadav of JD-U were also profiled, he said.
"526 persons have been profiled using the present form," he said, adding this was part of "transparent, security profiling and not associated with any kind of snooping or sypying."
"It is not that it has been started in the last 8 months," he said and proposed to sit with Leader of the Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad to go through the 526 forms filled during the previous UPA rule.
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", he said, adding "the issue raised is making mountain of what is not even a molehill." Jaitley said the practice of security profiling started in 1987 under Congress rule.
Earlier, Congress leaders Kamal Nath, Anand Sharma and Ghulam Nabi Azad had assailed the government over the issue. Azad in particular said that seeking such information amounts to snooping, and should have no place in a democracy. He claimed that after religious freedom, political freedom had also come under threat in India since NDA rule began.
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A miffed Congress Party is likely to seek answers from the NDA Government in Parliament on Monday over the visit of Delhi Police officials to the party office to seek details of Rahul Gandhi's physical appearance. The Congress is expected to bring other opposition parties on board and demand a statement from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh on the issue, media reports said.
On Sunday, the Congress alleged that some opposition leaders were also being "snooped" upon, and insisted that the matter was a serious enough nature to be discussed in Parliament. "The present government has much to answer when it comes to right of privacy of citizens. They are now trying to do it everywhere what was happening in one state. Both Modi and Amit Shah are now here. It is not confined to one person. It is much deeper. The practice that they had adopted in Gujarat, they want to carry it out now every where," party spokesperson Anand Sharma told reporters at the office of the All India Congress Committee in New Delhi.
Congress Member of Parliament from Thiruvananthapuram and former union minister of state Shashi Tharoor termed the whole issue as "Snoopgate 2". He said Mr Modi needed to explain why the government needed details of a person protected by the Special Protection Group (SPG). Delhi Police personnel visited Rahul Gandhi's residence last week and also sought details about his height and colour of eyes and hair. A team, led by Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police Jatin Narwal, visited Gandhi's Tughlak Lane residence to enquire about the sequence of events.
The team also checked the pictures of the policemen who had visited Rahul's residence a couple of days ago and enquired about the colour of Congress leader's eyes and hairs. The Delhi Police on Saturday said it was a routine security enquiry and that there was no malafide intention behind it.
As the news surfaced, the Home Ministry sought a report from the Delhi Police in this regard. Delhi Police Commissioner BS Bassi said Saturday, "Rahul Gandhi was not targeted by the police. It was a routine activity which is done to keep records of vulnerable personalities. Police also visited houses of Veerappa Moily, LK Advani, K Chandrasekhar Rao among others. There was no malafide intension behind seeking details about Gandhi."
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) accused the Congress of trying to politicise the issues. In Hyderabad, Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said Mr. Modi or Rajnath Singh were not involved in the police trying to find out details about Rahul Gandhi.
Rahul has been on a sabbatical since the start of Parliament's budget session on February 23.
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