New Delhi: The war of words between the Congress and the BJP has turned uglier after BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi's key aide and former Gujarat minister Amit Shah was accused of snooping on a young woman using state machinery in 2009 in Bangalore.
Not missing the opportunity, the Congress launched a scathing attack on Modi and asked Shah whom he was referring to as 'saheb' in the taped conversations. Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari said that if the woman was being protected at the behest of her own father, as Shah said, why wasn't the threat to her assessed and why wasn't private security used?
"If surveillance is being mounted in such a way then this amounts to breach of privacy," Tewari said. "Are people ok if their mothers and daughters are being snooped upon by the state machinery," he added.
The Congress came out in full force against the BJP with its prominent female leaders gathering to address the press conference. Union Minister of State for Environment Jayanthi Natarajan, Girija Vyas and Congress spokesperson Rita Bahuguna Joshi demanded a probe by a sitting Supreme Court judge into the matter.
JDU too joined the Congress in targeting its erstwhile ally over the alleged surveillance of a young woman by Shah.
Party leader KC Tyagi said, "BJP demands high-level enquiry and resignations in every case. Saheb is Modi himself, the matter should be probed and Modi should step down till the report of the enquiry comes out."
The BJP too retaliated strongly, asking how these tapes were made public, and how people who are not in the government got hold of the recordings.
Party leader Meenakshi Lekhi said, "I would like to put Manish Tewari in the shoes of a father protecting his daughter, then he wouldn't be able to speak this kind of language."
She added, "Tewari's speech is incoherent. The Congress has gone public with information that damages this woman's integrity. This is how the government, the Congress, and their surrogates function. In the garb of protecting the woman, they are actually harming her."
"I don't think they care for Amit Shah, they are targeting Modi. These are all cooked up stories with innuendos, it should be left to people like Manish Tewari and Kapil Sibal who try to gain oplitical mileage from a person's private life," Lekhi said.
Meanwhile, addressing a poll rally in Madhya Pradesh, Modi hit back at the Congress and accused it of spreading lies about him. Modi said that he has the protection of Mother India.
Earlier, a Cobrapost-Gulail report accessed taped conversations which are in the CBI's possession, which claimed that Amit Shah ordered police surveillance of a woman, allegedly on the orders of a certain 'saheb'.
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