Centre should probe into phone tapping in AP: Yanamala Ramakrishnudu

Amaravati: Urging the Government of India to intervene into the alleged phone tapping by the State government, the TDP senior leader Yanamala Ramakrishnudu stated that it was a serious Constitutional violation, in a statement on Wednesday. He said that the YSRCP government was resorting to phone tapping in order to eliminate opposition parties and blackmail the judiciary.

Ramakrishnudu slammed Director General of Police for writing a counter letter to TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu. It is known that Chandrababu Naidu wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a Central probe into these allegations a couple of days back.

The Opposition Leader in AP Council demanded that facts should be brought out whether written orders were given to telecom service providers for enabling the tapping of phones of advocates, opposition leaders and social activists. If it was true, the service providers should make public the list of phone numbers and details of those who gave them those illegal instructions. The AP Government was the main culprit in this and it was surprising that the guilty party was asking for proof of the offence, he maintained.

Ramakrishnudu asserted that nobody could impose sanctions on the media against putting out stories on phone tapping. This was not a prohibited item under any law. Asking journalists to reveal sources of their information would go against the basic tenets of the freedom of the press and independent media. The ruling party was perpetrating an oppressive regime on the people at the whims and fancies of its leaders down the line, he criticised.

The TDP leader said that in many instances in the past, different High Courts and the Supreme Court of India had issued specific guidelines that the phone interception orders as per the Indian Telegraph Act 1885 can be monitored at the level of Home Secretaries in the States and at the Centre. Only afterwards, such order copies could be sent to the service providers. In AP, no such procedures seemed to be followed.