New Delhi, April 10
De-classified intelligence
documents indicating Congress governments ordered intensive
surveillance on Subhas Chandra Bose's family triggered a political
slugfest on Friday with Congress terming it "selective leaks" by the NDA
government to "distort history" and the BJP hit back at its penchant
for "snooping".
The kin of the freedom fighter, meanwhile, sought
a judicial probe into the spying and demanded that the Narendra Modi
government declassify the secret files related to Netaji, and the clan.
The
documents, reportedly disclosed by the union home ministry, revealed
that the government snooped on the Bose family members between 1948 and
1968 with Intelligence Bureau (IB) officers intercepting, reading and
recording their correspondence.
The Congress, however, refuted
the revelation, claiming that "a systematic and sinister propaganda of
selective leaks and half truths has been unleashed by current BJP
Government to malign national icons."
But union minister
Nirmala Sitharaman hit back, saying: "The BJP today is definitely taking
a stand that this is really surprising and shocking. Already on the
dimension of snooping, research that has come out, I certainly feel that
till 2010-11, snooping has become a part of Congress' DNA...We express
our concern."
Seemingly skeptical, Congress spokesperson Abhishek
Manu Singhvi questioned the government's intention behind revealing
"half truth and not the full information", while noting that the Prime
Minister's Office had earlier refused to disclose records related to the
freedom fighter's death on grounds of national security.
Recounting
the names of the leaders who served as prime ministers as well as home
ministers during the period in question, he claimed that "every attempt
is being made to distort history".
"In making these allegations
with a blind-eyed anti-Nehruvian agenda, the BJP-led government (and its
ilk) forgot who were the prime ministers that time. So the allegation
is against Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Gulzarilal Nanda and Indira
Gandhi... commonly acknowledged as national icons," he said.
Noting
the protocol observed by the IB, Singhvi said its sleuths report to the
home minister and cannot move without his authorization.
By
implication, therefore, "the allegation by the BJP is against Sardar
Vallabhbhai Patel, Govind Ballabh Pant, Yashwantrao Chavan (home
ministers of the period). Nobody is sacred for cheap politics," he said.
Taking
on the Congress, senior BJP leader Subramanian Swamy claimed that the
revelations "proves that Nehru was scared of Subhas Chandra Bose. This
shows how paranoid Nehru was about Subhas Chandra Bose".
Meanwhile,
the documents have been placed in the public domain at the National
Archives here. An official there however told a news channel that the
files were "not available for now".
