Using govt agencies to wage political battles

Apparently, former Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Phadnavis is committing the same mistake as his Central leadership by using government agencies for political battles. Otherwise, he would not have openly cited a top secret document originated by the former Additional DGP (Intelligence), Maharashtra, which was a product of unauthorised, nay illegal, snooping.

As a former chief minister, he should have known that the possession and misuse of a restricted document is an offence under the Official Secrets Act.

Instead, he claimed that he had a pen drive of this report which was found freely circulating even before he mentioned it to the Union Home Secretary.

This was meant to fortify the allegations made by the former Commissioner of Police against the state Home Minister of alleged corruption and extortion which is being heard by the Bombay High Court.

The Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) ruling Maharashtra is alleging that this is a political conspiracy by the BJP to topple their government with the help of a few police officers. Fortunately, they have not yet registered an offence of “sedition” which some BJP-ruled states always do.

The Chief Secretary of Maharashtra, who was then the Additional Chief Secretary (Home), has revealed that the lady officer had “misled” the government while seeking permission for phone tapping. He had said that she had sought approval last year under the Indian Telegraph Act on national security and law and order reasons. Instead, she had “misused the permission granted, for obvious political reasons.”

He also revealed that she had later called on him, the Home Minister and the Chief Minister to apologise for her wrongdoing.

The Commissioner of Police, who has filed a PIL in the Bombay High Court after his efforts to move the Supreme Court had failed, has cited this report to fortify his claims that a police transfer “racket” was being run by the state Home Minister through certain police officers. He had claimed that the Home Minister had asked Sachin Vaze of the Crime Branch to collect Rs 100 crore a month. Vaze was arrested by the NIA for the alleged murder of Mansukh Hiran who had reportedly placed gelatin sticks in an SUV in front of the Ambani tower.

The Commissioner seems to have taken cognisance of this alleged illegal activity only after he was shifted out of his job on March 16 instant although he was holding that charge since February 2020. Also, his trusted aide Sachin Vaze, who was under suspension for a custodial death case, was reinstated by a committee chaired by him and posted to the elite Crime Branch instead of joining what is called the “side branches” to prevent malfeasance by them.

All these reveal severe management problems in the working of the Mumbai Police which needs a drastic revamping.

In particular, the freedom with which the police are snooping on private communications on the ground of national security is a big danger to our privacy, freedom and human rights. This particular point applies not only to Maharashtra but also other states and especially to Central agencies which are totally opaque on their electronic surveillance activities.

It would appear that even the inbuilt supervisory system, like home secretaries granting the permission for monitoring has failed, as is evident from the current example. Earlier, the powers to grant permission were with the police chiefs in big cities. The lacuna in the present system is the absence of any audit on how such permissions are utilised by the agencies concerned, like the police, Enforcement Directorate, National Investigation Agency, Customs and others.

This problem is very old. An RTI application in January 2012 had revealed that our Union Home Ministry issued 7,000-9,500 interception orders a month. It must have gone up by leaps and bounds as Central agencies like the ED, Customs or NIA are much more active now, especially as elections approach. The above figure does not include thousands of interceptions done by the State police and Central intelligence agencies.

The problem is not only with government agencies. Even non-state agencies like private security groups were doing what is called “off the air monitoring systems” to tap cell phones without government authorisation or with the knowledge of service providers. During the last two decades, especially after 26/11, the private sector has also entered this area of “off-air” interception of their rivals’ communications, taking advantage of the multitude of foreign “security specialists” who were exploiting our poor security situation and inadequate regulatory mechanisms.

This danger was flagged by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on December 15, 2010 while addressing the corporate leaders. He wanted the Cabinet Secretary to “look for solutions through technology to prevent access of telephone conversations to systems outside the institutional framework of government.” This was while he was assuring the corporate sector in the wake of the “Nira Radia revelations” which had suggested phone-tapping of corporate personalities.

The Naresh Chandra Task Force on National Security set up by the UPA government had interviewed me in November 2011, wherein, among others, I had recommended the creation of an office of cyber security under the cabinet secretary or NSA to coordinate all technical intelligence efforts, including cyber security programmes to avoid duplication of efforts by different Central agencies.

Also, to ensure that such efforts are legitimate without being commercially or politically misused, I had verbally suggested to Naresh Chandra that we should set up something like an ombudsman to assure the public, media, politicians and corporate leaders that our interceptions would be strictly on national security, prevention of crime and maintenance of law and order.

Such a system exists in the UK in the form of “Interception of Communications Commissioner” (ICC) created under the “Regulation of Investigative Powers Act-RIPA 2000)”. The ICC has powers to even check interceptions done by their national intelligence services like MI-5 (SS), Mi-6 (SIS) and GCHQ to ensure that they do not breach the guidelines. The ICC’s annual reports to the PM for placing before the parliament are available on the ICC website.

We need to think on these lines for guarding our privacy, liberty and human rights.