Panel to probe if phones were tapped during Fadnavis’ tenure

The Maharashtra government has formed a three-member committee to probe whether phones of legislators were illegally tapped during Devendra Fadnavis government’s tenure. The three-member committee headed by DGP Sanjay Pandey will have state intelligence department chief and Mumbai special branch additional police commissioner as members.

The panel has been given the mandate to also probe the means employed for tapping and fix responsibility on those who ordered and did the phone tapping. The development comes after Congress MLA Nana Patole claimed in the assembly that his phone and those of BJP legislators were tapped by the Fadnavis government. Patole was a BJP MP till 2017 before he quit and joined the Congress. Patole had only spoken about his phone being tapped between 2016 and 2017.

Several Congress and Shiv Sena politicians have claimed that their phones were under surveillance during the Fadnavis government tenure and especially in 2019 when the Shiv Sena leadership was in talks with the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party leadership to form a government in the state.