Samajwadi Party to continue support to UPA
by Ashok Sah

     New Delhi: Ending speculation about snapping its ties with the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government in the wake of the phone tapping controversy, the Samajwadi Party today decided to continue its support, saying the issue was not a political one. Samajwadi Party General Secretary Amar Singh said this after meeting Ajit Singh, chief of Rashtritya Lok Dal (RLD) and a coalition partner in the Mulayam Singh Yadav Government in Uttar Pradesh.

   "We consider the phone tapping issue a national one and not as political," he said. Singh said that his meeting with the RLD chief was a part of his campaign to acquaint non-Congress leaders about the phone tapping of opposition leaders. Earlier, there was a report that the Samajwadi Party may withdraw its outside support to the UPA government at the Centre. The party has 38 MPs in the Lok Sabha and 12 MPs in the Rajya Sabha. Although that is not likely to have any impact on the UPA as it has enough MPs in Parliament.

   The Congress, meanwhile, has been giving outside support to the Samajwadi Party government in Uttar Pradesh even though relations between them have soured. Relations between the two parties have soured following Amar Singh's allegation that Sonia Gandhi was behind the phone tapping incident. Mulayam Singh Yadav had alleged that Congress party President Sonia Gandhi had asked Government agencies to tap telephones of senior SP leaders, saying the telephones of the party members were "being tracked by the Delhi Police at the behest of 10, Janpath". Yadav had said that the conversation of Amar Singh was regularly being tapped and his phone had a direct link to the phone of Joint Commissioner (Crime), North Zone, Delhi, adding that the order for this operation was given by the Principal Secretary, Home. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) had, however, refuted the allegations, terming the allegations as "totally baseless". L.C. Goel, Joint Secretary, Internal Security, MHA, had said that the documents and evidence available with them and with the telecom service providers, cited as the basis of such monitoring, appeared to be prima facie, a clear case of forgery, adding that no such instructions had been issued by the Home Ministry in this regard and it was being investigated by the Delhi Police. Delhi Police has so far arrested four persons in connection with the phone tapping case.

   The arrested persons are Bhupendra, the owner of a private detective agency, who was nabbed on December 30, Kuldeep Singh, an employee of the Reliance Infocomm, who had allegedly helped Bhupendra and an associate of Bhupendra. According to police, Bhupendra, the owner of 'Metro Intelligence' in South Extension was allegedly tapping Amar Sigh's phone on the basis of forged letters in the name of Delhi government's Home Secretary R Narayanswamy and Delhi Police's Joint Commissioner (Crime) Ranjit Narayan. Delhi Police had registered a case of forgery, cheating, criminal conspiracy and other relevant sections of the Indian Telegraph Act in connection with the allegations made by Mulayam Singh Yadav.

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