**India’s opposition parties are likely to disrupt parliament over a report that phones of senior politicians have been secretly tapped by the government.**Outlook magazine has reported that that mobile phones of politicians, including a senior federal minister, had been tapped by the government.
Outlook claimed that the phones were tapped with equipment brought by an federal intelligence agency.
The government has not yet reacted to the report.
The opposition parties say they will demand a statement from the prime minister on the issue.
A spokesman for the main opposition BJP said that the party would also demand a joint parliamentary committee probe into the matter.
“In the garb of tracking terror, the government is tracking politicians and even their cabinet ministers,” Rajiv Pratap Rudy said.
BJP leader LK Advani wrote in his blog that the report reminded him of the days of the state of emergency in India in the mid 1970s.
‘Invasion of privacy’
He said existing laws - which permit phone tapping after due permission from the interior ministry - should be scrapped.
“It should be replaced by a new legislation which forbids invasion of an ordinary citizen’s privacy, but which formally recognises the right of the state to use the latest It devices of interception to deal only with crime, subversion and espionage,” Mr Advani said.
Outlook magazine said that the phones of a federal minister, Sharad Pawar, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar and a senior politician of the ruling Congress party Digvijay Singh had been tapped.
Congress party spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi told reporters that that it was “entirely possible that legitimate national security activity could have had an unintended inclusion of snatches of conversation by inadvertence and not by design.”
“But these are explanations for the government to come up with. Till then let us not give advance threats of disruption,” he said.This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
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