BJP bosses may not have pressed for CBI probe: H D Deve Gowda

Bengaluru: Playing down allegations of telephone tapping against his son and former Chief Minister, H D Kumaraswamy, Janata Dal(S) supremo, H D Deve Gowda said here on Monday that the issue had been blown out of proportion.

Speaking to reporters at the party office, Mr Gowda said  he believed  the decision to hand over the probe into the telephone tapping was taken locally with no intervention from the  Centre.

“I don't think Mr Modi or Mr Shah ordered the state government to hand over the issue to the CBI. It was done by the Chief Minister under  pressure from all sides and based on statements made  by Congress leaders, including former Chief Minister  Siddaramaiah,” Mr Gowda said, recalling that  Mr Kumaraswamy too had sought a probe into the issue.

While the media was trying to make it seem that the former Chief Minister was guilty , in one case even the Supreme Court had ruled that telephone tapping was not wrong, he argued.

“I have seen the statistics on telephone tapping during each government. When Mr Ramakrishna Hegde was Chief Minister, telephone tapping was done and the issue was debated in Parliament. He had to resign later. Barring that episode, there was no big incident of  telephone tapping e in the  country. But for the last 18 months, the media has been busy  finding fault with Mr Kumaraswamy,” he deplored, adding, “This started as a fight between two officers and has now taken another turn. Let's see where it goes.”