india

Updated: Nov 18, 2019 23:53 IST

Bharatiya Janata Party lawmaker from Nizamabad parliamentary constituency Bandi Sanjay on Sunday alleged that the Telangana Rashtra Samithi government was tapping landline and mobile phones of opposition party leaders and bureaucrats.

Sanjay was referring to an audio clip containing conversation between him and Karimnagar collector Sarfraz Ahmed over the alleged excessive poll expenditure incurred by TRS leader and state civil supplies minister Gangula Kamalakar during the December 2018 Telangana assembly elections.

Sanjay lost to Kamalakar in the elections, but was later elected as Karimnagar MP in the Lok Sabha elections held on April 11.

The audio clip that went viral on Saturday had a conversation, in which the collector is heard telling Sanjay that he would look into the complaints of huge expenditure incurred by Kamalakar and in case it was found to be in excess of the prescribed expenditure limit, the TRS legislator would be disqualified.

Kamalakar alleged that Sanjay, in collusion with the collector, were trying to get him disqualified on the pretext of excess expenditure. “How can the collector give information about poll expenditure of a candidate to another contestant? It is a confidential matter. I will take up the issue with chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao,” he told reporters.

Sanjay wondered how Kamalakar could get the details of conversation between him and the collector. “It is a private conversation between two persons. Unless the government taps my telephone and that of the collector, it is not possible to get the audio clip out,” he alleged.

The BJP MP said he had only brought the alleged violation of election norms by the TRS leader to the notice of Sarfraz Ahmed and urged him to take action. “The collector was only explaining the rules,” he said.

He said it was unfortunate that the government was treating even a complaint to the official concerned as a crime. “By leaking such audios, the TRS leadership is trying to tarnish the image of a sincere IAS officer,” Sanjay said.

The collector refused to comment on the allegations made by the TRS leaders.