New Delhi: Stepping up attack on Narendra Modi, Congress on Friday revived the demand for a probe by a Supreme Court judge into the snoopgate, dubbing the inquiry instituted by Gujarat Government as a "Save Modi Commission".
Gujarat Congress leaders have petitioned President Pranab Mukherjee and written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to investigate the "Snoopgate CD of telephonic conversations.... That exposed the unauthorised and illegal spying and tapping of phonecalls of a girl of special interest to the Gujarat Chief Minister".
At the AICC briefing, state Congress chief Arjun Modhwadia and former state CLP leader Shaktisinh Gohil suggested that such a probe was a must as the Modi regime has witnessed illegal telephone tapping of some 93,000 persons per month.
AICC spokesman Sandeep Dikshit said that the demand was "justified" and the probe was "needed" as the matter involved inter-state issues as the surveillance extended to Maharashtra and Karnataka too.
They said that the Inquiry Commission headed by retired Judge Sugnaben Bhatt appointed by Gujarat has "irrelevant" terms of reference and there is no reference to the issue of telephone tapping.
Demanding that the Commission be dissolved, the Gujarat Congress leaders also said that the terms of reference also do not refer to the criminality aspect.
In the petition, they raised a number of questions including what "relation" the Chief Minister had with the said woman which warranted deployment of all the security agencies of government of Gujarat?
The Congress demand came even as BJP accused the UPA government of `stooping to any level to malign` the BJP PM candidate.
Senior party leader M Venkaiah Naidu said in Chennai that the attempt to constitute an inquiry into the alleged snooping episode in Gujarat in which there was no complaint exposed the `desperation` of the Congress in the run up to the general elections.
