October 6: Union home secretary K Padmanabhaiah on Monday directed the telecom department to hold an inquiry into the alleged telephone tapping of conversations between Nusli Wadia and Field Marshal Manekshaw as political parties maintained a discreet silence over the snowballing Tata Tea-Ulfa nexus.

Padmanabhaiah denied involvement of any government agency in the alleged phone tapping and, in a statement, said he was asking the department of telecom to hold an inquiry under the relevant act.

Home ministry sources were also at pains to deny involvement of the Maharashtra government agencies in the murky affair while not discounting the possibility of some private agency getting into the business in collusion with unscrupulous elements in the department.

Political parties took a cautious stand. Even the Congress party, whose recent report on the Assam situation criticised the Mahanta rule, chose to play cool on the Tata Tea-Ulfa nexus officially.

Answering queries by newsmen, however, the Congress party spokesman Vithal Gadgil said phone tapping was bad.

The Congress stand on the burgeoning controversy over Tata Tea-Ulfa nexus has been more or less known. Without making it official, the party is credited with the view that the issue has been blown out of proportion because of "corporate war".

The Congress party feels that the present AGP outfit has been known to be close to Ulfa ranks. Now that the AGP had taken over the reins of administration in Assam, it was talking a different language, the party feels.

In fact, a two-member team of the party recently submitted a report on the Assam situation and blamed the AGP government for deteriorating law and order situation in the state.

The two-member team consisting of Surender Singla and PM Sayeed was specially sent to the north-east by the party high command to study the situation in Assam and report back to it just on the eve of the media disclosure on the Tata Tea-Ulfa nexus.

BJP sources said the party would come out with a studied reaction of the situation after going into the whole issue threadbare. They appeared to be skirting the issue at the moment.

The left party too did not come out with any official reaction till the time of filing this report. Left party sources said they would first discuss the situation among themselves before coming out with any official reaction.The Congress brass made no bone in privately admitting that insurgency-ridden states faced the same problem everywhere, including Jammu and Kashmir.

The situation was no different in Punjab in the thick of militancy, they say, pointing out how businessmen and traders were threatened to pay ransom money to militants in full knowledge of authorities.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.