n a startling incident, high power listening devices were found in the bedroom of Nitin Gadkari at his 13 Teen Murti Lane residence in New Delhi. The discovery was "accidental" and a debugging exercise was immediately ordered.

According to highly placed sources, more devices were consequently discovered at the residence of the senior BJP leader who is also the Union Minister for Road Transport & Highways. Gadkari has apparently informed Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat about the incident.

Initial investigations have revealed that the bugs were "planted in the house by a foreign agency since the sophisticated listening devices found are used only by western intelligence operatives, particularly the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA)". It may be recalled that Edward Snowden's revelations carried by Washington Post on 30 June stated that top BJP leaders were under surveillance by a premier US spy agency. It could not be ascertained who besides Gadkari were the other BJP leaders who had been spied upon. Operations may now be going on to check whether, or not, other prominent BJP leaders too were under surveillance by this external agency. The BJP-led NDA government lodged a strong protest with the US State Department following the publication of the news in the Washington Post.

Nitin Gadkari could not be contacted for his comments despite repeated attempts. There was no response to a text message sent to him on his cell phone. However, his executive secretary Vaibhav Dange said he was not aware of any such incident. When asked for Mr Gadkari's comment, he said, "I have no information about it."

It may be mentioned that Gadkari has since 2011 been among the most important leaders of the BJP. His proximity to the RSS leadership is well known. After the Modi government was sworn in, he, Arun Jaitley and Rajnath Singh are amongst the principal advisers of the Prime Minister.

Highly placed sources said the listening devices were of exceptionally high quality, such as not generally used in India. The Indian agencies which debugged the house have indicated the role of a foreign hand.

The incident comes in the wake of recent revelations that US' top spy agency, National Security Agency, was authorised by a US court in 2010 to carry out surveillance on the BJP along with five other political organisations across the world, including Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and Pakistan People's Party. The NSA had sought permission to carry out surveillance, according to a document provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, which was made public by the Washington Post recently.

Snowden leaked thousands of classified documents to the media, uncovering the existence of numerous global surveillance programmes, many of them run by the NSA, which triggered worldwide outrage.

This is not the first such case of surveillance of senior politicians in recent times. In June 2011, there were reports that offices of the Ministry of Finance were bugged. President Pranab Mukherjee was heading the ministry at that time. About a year later, there was a report that the then Defence Minister A.K. Antony's office had been bugged. While the details were not made public, the incidents were seen as a part of internal Congress politics, unlike in the present case, where the role of a foreign agency is suspected.