Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday saw symptoms of an “insecure dictator” in the government’s surveillance order as a joint Opposition vociferously protested what it described as the spectre of an Orwellian state and an assault on the right to privacy.
As the political storm gathered and general Internet users resented the snoop plan, Rahul tweeted: “Converting India into a police state isn’t going to solve your problems, Modi Ji. It’s only going to prove to over one billion Indians, what an insecure dictator you really are.”
The Congress firmly rejected the government’s defence that the notification was the continuation of rules framed under the Information Technology Act 2000, which was amended in 2009.
The Congress asserted that the latest notification went far beyond the scope of the law and was unconstitutional if viewed against the backdrop of the new legal scheme created by the right to privacy and Aadhaar judgments of the Supreme Court.
“If there is no change, what was the need for this notification by the home ministry now?” asked Congress spokesperson and lawyer Abhishek Manu Singhvi.
He told The Telegraph: “The Supreme Court has fundamentally changed the legal framework with the right to privacy and Aadhaar judgments. This order is illegal, apart from being draconian.”
Arguing that the 2009 rules allowed phone tapping on a case-to-case basis, Singhvi said: “The list of agencies have now been expanded and given sweeping powers. It goes beyond telephone tapping and call interceptions and there is no judicial or parliamentary oversight.
“What was needed is reform of the rules in the light of privacy becoming a fundamental right and the Aadhaar judgment stipulating judicial oversight, but the government brought a draconian notification without any consultation.”
Many Congress leaders claimed that the order would be scrapped by the court in a minute and hoped the majority of the people, particularly youths, would revolt against any attempt to place them under surveillance.
Bringing other political parties on the same platform to oppose the move, the Congress aggressively launched a social media campaign to spread the message. It promptly coined a slogan — “Abki baar/Stalker sarkar.”
The Opposition staged a boisterous protest in both Houses of Parliament.
Appearing before the media along with other Opposition leaders, the Congress’s Anand Sharma said: “We are seriously concerned over the home ministry order of December 20 that authorises security and intelligence agencies for the purposes of interception, monitoring and decryption of any information generated, transmitted, received or stored in any computer resource.
“This is a very serious development. Through this order, the BJP government is converting India into a surveillance state. It is the ultimate assault on the fundamental rights and the right to privacy. It is also in direct conflict with the Supreme Court judgment that the right to privacy is a fundamental right.
“The government has done it by stealth. We collectively oppose it because this gives unlimited powers to all these agencies to monitor every information. Such surveillance is unacceptable in our democracy.”
Sharma said the Opposition had been expressing concern for the past three-four years that phones of political rivals, top officials, judges of high courts and the Supreme Court, and big industrialists were being tapped.
“This poses a big threat to our democracy and this is not acceptable. We will fight it collectively,” he said.
Other Opposition leaders, including the Samajwadi Party, Trinamul Congress, RJD, NCP and the DMK, also opposed the move, describing it as an attempt to create an “Orwellian State”.
Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee sought public opinion on the matter. She maintained that “blanket surveillance” was not favoured by law.
At another media conference, Congress spokesperson Jaiveer Shergill said: “The Modi government has a notorious track record of devising ways to infringe upon the privacy of citizens and this order is also violative of the IT Act, the right to privacy judgment and the Aadhaar judgment. Now we understand the meaning of the 2014 slogan ‘ghar-ghar Modi’.”
According to Shergill, Section 69 of the IT Act, under which the order was issued, grants the power to the government to intercept computers on a case-by-case basis only on the ground of protecting the sovereignty and integrity of India, in public interest and preventing the commission of any offence.
“The new order is completely silent on the reasons for equipping the investigating agencies with vast powers,” the Congress leader said.
He added: “The order has bulldozed the right to privacy granted by the Supreme Court through its 547-page detailed judgment. The order has the potential to demolish the constitutional firewall created by the Supreme Court between the government and the citizens with respect to their informational privacy, bodily privacy and data privacy.”
Shergill insisted that the new order, instead of permitting interception of calls or data, allows agencies to tap calls, read online communication, access data stored in computer as well as intercept any digital information shared with others.