Rahul Gandhi doing fear-mongering, playing with national security: Amit

Amit Shah

BJP President Amit Shah on Friday hit back at Congress President Rahul Gandhi on the government order for monitoring of all computers, saying he was doing "fear-mongering" and playing with the national security.

"Yet again Rahul (Gandhi) does fear-mongering and plays politics with national security. UPA put no barriers on unlawful surveillance. When Modi government puts safeguards for citizens, Rahul cries conspiracy.

"Why are you lying so much and what is the fear that you are hiding," he said in a series of tweets.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief also attacked the Congress saying that there were only "two insecure dictators" in the history of the country.

"There were only two insecure dictators in the history of India. One imposed emergency and the other wanted unrestricted access to read letters of common citizens.

"Guess who were they, Rahul Gandhi?" he said in an apparent reference to late prime ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.

Shah's remarks came soon after Gandhi called Modi an "insecure dictator".

Earlier, the Congress chief said: "Converting India into a police state isn't going to solve your problems, Modi Ji. It's only going to prove to over 1 billion Indians what an insecure dictator you really are."

The BJP and Congress traded barbs after the Ministry of Home Affairs on Thursday issued an order giving 10 central agencies, including the CBI, the ED and the Delhi Police among others to "intercept, monitor and decrypt any information generated, transmitted, received or stored in any computer".

Catch up on all the latest Crime, National, International and Hatke news here. Also, download the new mid-day Android and iOS apps to get latest updates