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My Word 
Season of Long Knives
Gang wars shake politics
by Rajinder Puri

Is history repeating itself as farce? In 1975 Indira Gandhi declared the Emergency. That gave birth to opposition unity. Now there has occurred an incident which seems to be developing into a new rallying point for opposition unity. Mr Amar Singh’s phone was tapped. With his characteristic flair for publicity Mr Singh lobbied against this trespass of privacy. He garnered surprising support from both the media and politicians.

At the moment of writing Mr LK Advani, Mr Chandrababu Naidu, Ms Jayalalithaa, Mr Deve Gowda, Mr Prakash Singh Badal and Mr Sitharam Yechuri are just some of the political luminaries who have claimed to be victims of nefarious electronic eavesdropping. And every day the tally of those who are jumping on the phone-tapping bandwagon increases. Undoubtedly innumerable politicians have been victims of phone-tapping. The CPI (M) leader Mr Prakash Karat solemnly described this as a serious breach of democratic norms and demanded a thorough and credible inquiry. Mr Amar Singh meanwhile has moved the Supreme Court. He has accused Mrs. Sonia Gandhi of being the inspiration of a conspiracy to entrap him.

The media is enthusiastically investigating this affair while the police conduct their own probe. The police have claimed that the official letters which authorized the phone taps were forged. They have made some arrests and claimed to have identified the mastermind behind the crime without disclosing his name. It has already been established that big money exchanged hands to organize the surveillance. One newspaper has authoritatively stated that the mastermind was a former Intelligence officer who has already fled the country. If this is correct it speaks volumes about the police which knew of his identity but allowed him to escape.

There is considerable speculation about the more salacious aspects of the affair. The grapevine is buzzing with rumors about taped conversations with Bollywood starlets and underworld dons. All this may be conveniently ignored. There are just two aspects that merit serious consideration. First, whether the official letters authorizing the phone tapping were in fact forgeries or was this claim part of a cover-up? Both Reliance Infocom, the service provider for the parallel phone lines used for tapping, and the police have confirmed that many official requests for parallel lines are periodically made. But Reliance Infocom gave the parallel line in this case to a private detective who submitted the purported letters of authorization. The firm did not check with official sources the authenticity of the letters because of the large number of such requests it deals with. But are these large number of requests outsourced to private detectives who tap phones on behalf of the police? Have there been other cases of outsourcing by either police or telecom service providers to private individuals enabling them to tap phones with official sanction? Is outsourcing of phone tapping by police to private detectives customary? If so, are they paid a fee from the tax-payer’s money to do a job which the police is fully equipped to handle? And if they are paid a fee for their services, does it not open a window for corrupt officials to demand their own cut from the fee paid?

The second aspect worth consideration would arise only if the letters are genuine. That would suggest that an extra-constitutional authority could order electronic surveillance of political opponents. In either event, whether the letters were forged or not, gaping holes in our national security have been exposed. This has been the state of affairs for a very long time.

Phone tapping of political leaders by official agencies is a legacy of British rule. The bureaucratic steel frame inherited from the British remained intact. Its mode of functioning did not change. Intelligence agencies during British rule kept close tabs on political leaders. The practice continued under the new dispensation.

What is new is the motivation behind surveillance. Previously it was collection of information. During Indira Gandhi’s tenure it changed to collection of material for use against politicians to coerce them into submission. A distinguished former director of CBI confessed in a private conversation his puzzlement over being asked to investigate celebrities. After he had gathered incriminating evidence against them, he heard nothing further about his findings. He should have known. His information went into dossiers that came in handy to blackmail inconvenient politicians.

That practice has grown exponentially. And as quantitative change eventually becomes qualitative change, it has perverted the role of investigative agencies and the very nature of politics. These agencies have become instruments of vendetta against political opponents. After Mr Mulayam Singh became inconvenient his disproportionate assets are being probed. Meanwhile Ms Mayawati’s compliance has earned her respite from further probes of her disproportionate assets. And the scandalous manner in which the Bofors probe is sought to be buried reveals everything.

The phone tapping peccadillo therefore is just the tip of the iceberg. What lies beneath it is much uglier. What attracts attention is the passion it has aroused among parties across the board. That seems to suggest the start of a power struggle.

– Continued

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