Revealing that people in his office received an alert from Apple about an attempted “state-sponsored hacking,” former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday alleged that snooping is carried out by deploying intelligence agencies the moment they target business tycoon Gautam Adani.
Addressing a press conference at the All India Congress Committee (AICC) headquarters, Mr. Gandhi said “Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s soul is with Adani ji”.
“As soon as Adani is touched, intelligence agencies and snooping are deployed.... Earlier, I used to think that PM [Prime Minister] is number one, Adani is number two, and Amit Shah is number three. But actually, this is wrong. We have come to know that Adani is number one and PM is number two,” Mr. Gandhi said.
The former Congress chief accused the government of indulging in “distraction politics” to divert attention away from the Adani group, that is allegedly creating monopolies in various sectors in the country.
“We are not scared. You can do as much phone tapping as you want, I don’t care. If you want to take my phone, I will give it to you,” he added.
Mr. Gandhi claimed that the entire wealth of the people, be it Dalits, tribals, backwards and the poor, is being taken away and given into the hands of one or two people to create monopolies. These monopolies, in turn, are leading to inequalities and growing unemployment.
Caste census
Keeping with his recent OBC [other backward classes] outreach, the Congress leader asserted that these inequalities will not go unless a caste census is done and the people are given their rights according to their population after conducting this X-ray.
“Our job is to make them understand what is going on. This [attempted hacking] is clearly a sign of panic. This is against the entire Opposition...This is the work of thieves and criminals,” he alleged.
Mr. Gandhi alleged that the country is divided into pro-Adani control and pro-people control which was anti-monopoly which they were fighting for. Further, he claimed an issue like an Apple warning of “state-sponsored attackers” on their phones would have toppled any government in the past, be it of Manmohan Singh or Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
“We have now entered different politics. This would have been explosive, dynamic earlier... it would have blown the government then. It would have toppled any government earlier,” he said.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, who also received a similar message, said on X, “Modi government has only one slogan — ‘Save Adani and destroy democracy’. The ‘B jasoos’ party first used ‘Pegasus’ to snoop on Opposition leaders and institutions, now through some other mechanism. INDIA that is Bharat will not be intimidated by such threats.”
Published - October 31, 2023 01:18 pm IST
