Rubbishing the Home Minister’s contention that reported bugging of Pranab Mukherjee’s office was a “non-event”, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday said it was a very serious matter and demanded that the Finance Minister’s letter to the Prime Minister in this regard be made public.
Reacting sharply to Mr. Chidambaram saying he did not know about the bugging incident in the offices of the Finance Minister and his aides, BJP spokesman Ravishankar Prasad said, “while the Finance Minister takes services of CBDT and foreign investigators before writing to the Prime Minister, the Home Minister says he was not aware.”
Expressing surprise at Mr. Chidambaram’s statement that he was not aware of the Intelligence Bureau’s probe into Mr. Mukherjee’s complaint about “bugging” of his office in North Block despite the IB being under the Home Minister, Mr. Prasad said, ”...It is the biggest comedy of Independent India.”
Claiming that Mr. Mukherjee suspected bugging in his office and even wrote a letter to the Prime Minister in this regard, he said the BJP wanted the contents of the letter to be made public.
“The letter which the Finance Minister wrote to the Prime Minister must be made public,” Mr. Prasad told reporters this evening, adding that North Block was not the private property of Mr. Chidambaram or anybody else.
