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The Finance Ministry has asked the Department of Telecom to investigate the role of telecom operators in the leaking of telephonic conversations involving corporate lobbyist Ms Niira Radia.
“DoT will have to conduct a further inquiry to establish the leakage of the telephonic intercepts at the end of telecom service providers, to identify the actual individuals who are involved in this,” the Finance Ministry said in a communication to the Telecom Secretary, Mr R. Chandrashekhar.
This letter follows a report submitted by a two-member committee set up by the Finance Ministry to enquire into the leakage of tapes.
Copy of report sought
Sources said that the DoT has sought a copy of this report before it investigates whether any operator was involved in leaking the tapes to the media. They also said that it will be difficult to ascertain misconduct as there was no way to prove if the telecom operator made copies of the conversation.
This comes even as the Government is planning to introduce new laws with regard to tapping phone calls and intercepting e-mails in a bid to make the system more robust. For instance, it might soon become mandatory for law enforcing agencies to destroy all recordings of individual conversation that are not relevant to the investigation.
The new rules will also make it difficult for units monitoring tax frauds under the Department of Revenue to tap into an individual's phones unless it is a case of public emergency.
IMG to finalise rules
An Inter-Ministerial Group (IMG) has been formed to finalise the rules. “Authorised agencies should review information available on intercepts at periodic intervals as directed by the Home Secretary and must destroy parts of transcripts that are not relevant to their work. The entire conversation or message is not to be retained by the intercepting agency,” states an internal note circulated for the IMG.
Ms Radia's phones were tapped by the tax authorities and about 800 conversations were leaked to the media. The Government note states that the power given to the Central Board of Direct Taxes to request for phone tapping may be reviewed or withdrawn.
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