The BJP on Tuesday appeared to buckle on its dare to Opposition leaders to file FIRs over the phone hacking charges after junior minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar claimed that even commerce minister Piyush Goyal had received a hack alert from Apple.

The minister of state for electronics and technology, Chandrasekhar, told a news channel that even senior minister Goyal had received the hacking attempt notification from Apple, seeking to puncture the Opposition's claim of being targeted by the government.

"Piyush Goyal got the notification too," Chandrasekhar told NDTV 24x7 while stressing that Apple must explain.

This claim by the junior minister, put out as an "exclusive" interview and a news flash, however, was dropped after some time by NDTV.

A message sent by this newspaper to NDTV seeking their response on why the claim by the junior minister was dropped didn't elicit any reply.

Sources aware of the developments, however, said Chandrasekhar had made an "inadvertent mistake".

"The minister was informed by his staff that someone known to Piyush Goyal had also received the alert notification from Apple. The minister mistakenly named Piyush Goyal in the TV interview and so it had to be dropped later," the source told The Telegraph.

Officially, however, there was no clarification from Chandrasekhar or NDTV.

The claim and the deletion came hours after BJP spokesperson and former information technology minister Ravi Shankar Prasad sought to dismiss the Opposition leaders' allegation as yet another politically driven, "false and baseless" attack on the Modi government.

"They should file an FIR if they have any problem. Who is stopping them?" Prasad said when asked about the Opposition leaders' allegation that the government was trying to hack their phones.

Prasad said it was for Apple to clarify, and not the government, and slammed the Opposition members.

He recalled the controversy over the Pegasus malware and said Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had refused to deposit his phone before a committee appointed by the Supreme Court, seeking to dismiss the Opposition's charge as yet another politically motivated move.

Later in the day, however, the ruling dispensation appeared to have shed its defiance with information technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw asking Apple to join the probe and promising to investigate the hack attempt notifications sent to Opposition leaders.

Chandrasekhar, too, tried to dismiss the Opposition's hacking attempt allegations.

Goyal spoke to news agency ANI later, but focussed on criticising the Opposition while maintaining silence on Chandrasekhar's claim that he too had received the alert notification from Apple.

Goyal sought to dismiss the threat notification from Apple to the Opposition leaders as "fake" or a "prank" by somebody.

"The Opposition has become so weak that in everything they see a conspiracy. They are victims of so much misconceptions these days that somebody may have tried to play a prank on them...," Goyal said, claiming that the government had "no role or intention" to spy on Opposition leaders.