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Journalism of Courage
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has given sanction to prosecute Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia under the Prevention of Corruption Act in connection with a snooping case related to the Aam Aadmi Party’s alleged ‘Feedback Unit (FBU)’.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has said the FBU started functioning on February 1, 2016, with 17 contractual employees most of whom were retired Intelligence Bureau and Central Paramilitary Force officials. The objective of the unit, the central agency said, was to allegedly spy over different ministries, Opposition political parties, entities and individuals and had no legislative or judicial oversight.
Earlier, Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena approved the CBI’s request to file a case against Sisodia, over allegations that the AAP government in 2015 created a FBU under the vigilance department to “collect political intelligence”.
According to internal documents of the vigilance department and the CBI, the proposal to create the FBU was allegedly moved in September 2015 and approved in October 2015 by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal without a cabinet note.
The unit was allegedly created to strengthen the vigilance establishment and gather “relevant information and actionable feedback” on the working of the various departments, institutions, entities, etc” under the Delhi government. The FBU started functioning on February 1, 2016, manned by 17 contractual employees, most of whom were retired officials of the Intelligence Bureau and Central Paramilitary Forces.
However, after the High Court upheld that L-G is the administrative head of the government, the vigilance secretary sent the file seeking ex post facto consent of the then LG Najeeb Jung twice in August 2016.
Jung ordered that the matter be referred to the CBI, taking note of prima facie evidence of improprieties and violation of rules. “No state government can put up a counter-IB (Intelligence Bureau) unit like this. If they have surveillance over me or you, it’s completely illegal. This is a violation of the right to privacy. This is a very serious matter. I cannot, because I do not like you, tap your phone,” Jung said.
The CBI, after an analysis of the nature of the reports generated by the unit, has alleged that “while 60% are related to Vigilance matters, political intelligence and other issues accounted for around 40%”, dealing with “political activities of persons, political entities and political issues touching political interest of AAP, BJP or like, which was beyond the scope and ambit of functions of FBU”.
L-G Saxena recommended a “deep threadbare investigation into the whole matter, over and above the evidence already gathered by CBI, so as to ascertain if there existed any sinister design akin to challenging the established constitutional authority of the State by clandestinely subverting institutions and statutes, and, if so, bring to book all those involved in such activities”.
Saxena’s order says there “seems to have been a well conceived attempt to establish an extraneous and parallel covert agency with overarching powers of snooping and trespass, without any legislative, judicial or executive oversight whatsoever”, and that “the seeds of creation of an extra constitutional/extra judicial body on lines of a private intelligence agency, answering to none but a single individual, were sown right at the inception stage.”
The Delhi government has dismissed the allegations as “completely bogus”.
“All allegations are completely bogus. Till now, CBI, ED and Delhi police have registered so many cases against us. About 163 cases have been registered. However, BJP has not been able to prove even a single case… these cases are all politically motivated. CBI and ED should rather investigate the dubious relationship between Modi and Adani where the real corruption happened,” the Delhi government said in a statement.
The AAP also issued a statement, saying “the world knows Modiji is involved in political snooping”.
“Allegations of political snooping against Sisodia ji are completely false. The whole world knows Modi ji is involved in political snooping, not Sisodia. An FIR should be registered against Modi ji, not Manish ji,” the party said.
On Thursday, Sisodia tweeted that “if big people were afraid” of him, he seems to have become equal to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “The BJP people have brought a new allegation against me that I have been spying on them since 2015. Such big people, whose existence is dependent on getting CBI, ED Pegasus to conspire against Opposition leaders, if even such big people are afraid of me, then it seems that I have become equal to Modi.”
