BENGALURU: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Tuesday alleged that the Central government was monitoring his phone as well as those of other Congress leaders in the state. Later, Home Minister Ramalinga Reddy echoed Siddaramaiah’s statement and said, “It is a blatant lie to say that we are monitoring phone lines of BJP leaders.
We are not doing this, but rather the Centre is. They (the Centre) have been tapping the phones of Congress leaders for a long time and we have known this, all along. They have been misusing agencies like the Enforcement Directorate, Central Bureau of Investigation and Income Tax for this purpose. We know that the phones of 35 Congress MLAs and ministers are being monitored,” he said.
Siddaramaiah and Reddy were responding to the allegation by BJP leader R Ashok that the state government was tapping the phones of BJP leaders as Congress had nothing else to counter them with. Ashok had on Monday that the state government was tracking 162 phones lines of BJP leaders.