The woman was tailed as she visited shopping malls, ice-cream parlours, hospitals and airports, according to the websites’ expose
NEW DELHI (TIP): Spelling trouble for BJP‘s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, the Centre today has ordered the setting up of an inquiry commission to probe into the alleged snooping of a young woman by the Gujarat police, at the behest of then state home minister Amit Shah. The decision was taken according to Section 3 of Commissions of Inquiry Act which enables the government the government to set up such a commission. The committee will be headed by a retired judge and the probe will be completed in three months. The Gujarat government had earlier already ordered a probe into the case. BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman said: “Congress is trying to hit at the principal opposition party’s prime ministerial candidate.
It is a clear case of political vindictiveness coming into play.” Flaying the Centre’s decision, senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley tweeted: ‘Cabinet decision to appoint a Commission to probe alleged snooping is violative of the Federal structure.’ He also said that the decision will be challenged in court. Jaitley said: “The Central Government has announced the setting up a Commission of Inquiry to probe the allegations of alleged snooping by the Gujarat Government. This action is politically motivated. The Congress Party has not learnt from the drubbing it got in the elections recently. It has continued with its strategy of fighting Narender Modi not politically but through investigative agencies and now through a Commission of Inquiry.” Two investigative websites – Cobrapost and Gulail – said earlier this month that they had access to 267 audio recordings that had been handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation.
They said the recordings contain telephone conversations from 2009 in which Modi’s former junior home minister Amit Shah orders a police officer to track the woman. In the phone recordings, the person alleged to be home minister Shah asks the surveillance to be carried out for his “saheb” – the respectful Hindi word for boss – when giving orders to police officer G L Singhal, who secretly recorded the conversations. Modi is not named. The woman was tailed as she visited shopping malls, ice-cream parlours, hospitals and airports, according to the websites’ expose. It was unclear why the woman was being followed. A letter by the woman’s father last week denied that there had been any unwanted surveillance. The father stated that he had asked Modi to keep a watch on his daughter for her safety. The BJP has dismissed the charges as part of “dirty tricks” in the lead-up to the elections.