NEW DELHI: Home minister Chidambaram on Thursday obliquely acknowledged that corporate lobbyist Nira Radia ’s phone was under surveillance. Although the minister did not take her name during his reply to a short duration discussion in the Rajya Sabha on phone tapping, he said that the government has adequate powers to intercept telephones of economic offenders.The minister said that “those who threaten financial stability and revenue collection” can well be discovered through interception. Mr Chidambaram, who maintained that tax evasion was a valid ground for interception, said the government was entitled to tap conversations if they relate to any transaction that needed to be investigated. “I-T department does not intercept unless authorised by law...If cases are under investigation, they will be investigated fully. And if any evasion is found, what law provides will follow,” the minister said.Mr Chidambaram also admitted that lobbyists were a reality both in India and abroad. However he underlined that, India, which has ruled out middlemen, does not encourage lobbyists. “We will have to consider what to do with lobbyists. These are grave issues to be addressed. We take the point. But we will address these issues. But let us not assume that the whole government is run by lobbyists,” Mr Chidambaram said while reacting to Rajya Sabha Opposition leader Arun Jaitley ’s charge that Cabinets are made and important policy decisions of the government are influenced by lobbyists.Initiating the debate, Mr Jaitley said that the government should respond to reports in the media about the role of a particular lobbyist in decision-making. “Are these allegations true? Have we become such a fragile democracy that we can be carried away by such influence? Lobbying is an art of persuading the government to take a particular decision. This persuasion may not be by an argument, this influence can also be by a collateral consideration,” Mr Jaitley had said. Responding to this charge, the home minister said the BJP was not quite qualified to level such allegations. “When the finance minister was appointed in 1998, one lobbyist outside objected,” he said pointing to the intervention by RSS to drop Jaswant Singh.