New Delhi: BJP on Monday said the setting up of a "parallel" Commission to probe the snooping of a woman in Gujarat allegedly at the behest of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi was a "malafide exercise" and paid a "great tribute" to the judiciary for not cooperating with the move.
Reacting to the Centre`s decision to drop its move to name a judge to head the Commission to probe the snooping of a young woman by Gujarat police, BJP leader Arun Jaitley said there was nothing left to investigate in the matter as there is already a Commission of Inquiry, appointed by Gujarat government, was going into the issue.
"The setting up of a parallel commission by the Centre was a malafide exercise and I would pay a great tribute to Indian judiciary for none of the judges in India was willing to cooperate with this malafide political exercise," the senior leader said.
"The lady in question has already made a statement. She has also sent a statement to the National Women`s Commission. I doubt that anything else is left for the central government to do in the matter," he said.
Jaitley said he state commission which is already investigating the issue has unlimited jurisdiction and it should continue to function and come out with its report.
It was alleged that illegal surveillance was carried out on a young woman architect in Gujarat in 2009 at the behest of Modi and Amit Shah who was the Home Minister at that time.
A controversy had broken out last week when senior ministers Kapil Sibal (Law) and Sushilkumar Shinde (Home) told the media that a judge would be named into the surveillance, which was dubbed as `snoopgate`, before May 16 when the counting of votes in the Lok Sabha elections is taken up.
The announcement came under severe attack from BJP which slammed the Congress-led UPA alleging it was practising vendetta out of desperation of defeat in the elections.
