Bengaluru: There was chaos in the Karnataka Assembly, as the BJP on Wednesday accused the Congress government of tapping phones at Lok Bhavan, following the state Minister H K Patil claimed that Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot was getting calls from Delhi and functioning under instructions of the centre.
BJP MLAs called the Siddaramaiah-led government a “phone tapping government”, and questioned how the state’s Ministers were accessing information on the phone calls received by the Lok Bhavan and the Governor.
The issue cropped up during the debate on the motion of thanks to the Governor’s address to the joint sitting of the state legislature.
“At whose behest did the then Governor lay his address? Isn’t that a precedent?” Kumar said, buttressing his point that Governors in the past, too, did not read full speeches.
Responding to this, Patil said: “We’ll have to talk about how phone calls come from Delhi and the Governor is made to leave from here.” The Opposition latched on to this. “Is the government tapping phones?” Suresh Kumar asked.
“Is the Lok Bhavan’s phone being tapped? The law minister has said this earlier, too. He should explain,” BJP’s V Sunil Kumar said.
IT/BT Minister Priyank Kharge intervened and charged that phone calls also come from Keshava Krupa, the Karnataka headquarters of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). To this, Sunil Kumar said that Congress gets phone calls from Italy, a reference to top leader Sonia Gandhi’s nativity.
Suresh Kumar, a former law minister, insisted that Patil’s statement pointed to something insidious.
“He has repeated his claim that calls come from Delhi to Lok Bhavan. This means that the government is tapping phones,” he said.
Patil retorted that the Ministry of Home Affairs, which manages gubernatorial affairs, should have clarified his allegation. “They (BJP) accept that Bharadwaj listened to Siddaramaiah. But they can’t digest it when I say that (Gehlot) listens to the Centre,” he said.
Leader of the Opposition R Ashoka also went after the Congress government over Patil’s statement.
Priyank said there was no logic in the debate. “The Governor is acting like the Centre’s puppet. That’s what (Patil) means,” he said.
Suresh Kumar urged Patil not to set a bad example by casting aspersions on constitutional offices.
