Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad claimed in the Rajya Sabha on Monday that the Centre had reduced Opposition leaders to “potential terrorists” and that their phones were being tapped, PTI reported.
“You have reduced all of us to terrorists, you have made us international terrorists,” said Azad, the leader of the Opposition in the Upper House. “Fear is not a good thing, especially in a democracy.”
He added, “No one today talks to me over phone because they say your phone is tapped.” Azad was speaking in the Rajya Sabha during a debate on the motion of thanks to President Ram Nath Kovind’s speech in Parliament on the opening day of the Budget Session. He called for “freedom of speech, freedom to socialise, freedom to do business”.
“You have divided political parties by using the Enforcement Directorate, the income tax department and National Investigation Agency,” Azad said, according to The Indian Express. “You have gone after people who are aligned with us. Businessmen are fearful of speaking to us on the phone because our phones are being tapped and they fear being targeted for having sided with the Opposition.”
He added: “When I was the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, we used to do that to terrorists.”
He also claimed that during his visits to Gujarat, he felt voters were threatened with dire consequences if they did not vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party. Azad also said that the Modi government was not a “game changer” but a “name-changer”, since it had changed the names of all schemes initiated by the United Progressive Alliance since 1985.
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