A petition in the Supreme Court has sought a stay on the Centre’s December 20 gazette notification authorising nine central agencies and the Delhi police commissioner to “intercept, monitor and decrypt” information transmitted by or stored in any computer.

Advocate Manohar Lal Sharma’s public interest plea is likely to come up for hearing this week after the apex court reopens on January 2 following a brief Christmas recess.

Sharma has alleged the idea behind the notification is to “control the entire country” through “dictatorship” and win the “coming general election under an undisclosed Emergency”.

He has claimed the Centre might implicate innocent citizens on the basis of the information collected by these agencies.

An “unlimited blanket power” has been conferred on these agencies, creating “a serious danger and injury to the freedom, life and liberty of the citizen of India”, he has argued.

Sharma has questioned the government’s powers to snoop on citizens without recording an FIR for any cognisable offence, and to subject its citizens to “slavery”.

Legal experts have said the notification runs counter to the 2017 ruling by a nine-judge constitution bench that upheld privacy as a fundamental right, and this year’s verdict by a five-judge bench that limited the scope of the Aadhaar card’s mandatory use.

Apart from the Delhi police commissioner, the agencies authorised to snoop are the Intelligence Bureau, Narcotics Control Bureau, Enforcement Directorate, Central Board of Direct Taxes, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, Central Bureau of Investigation, National Investigation Agency, Cabinet Secretariat (RAW) and the Directorate of Signal Intelligence (for service areas of Jammu and Kashmir, Northeast and Assam).