Snoopgate inquiry panel to be set up before Lok Sabha results

NEW DELHI: Before the start of counting of votes for the Lok Sabha elections, the Centre will appoint a retired judge of Supreme Court or a retired chief justice of a high court to head the commission set up to probe snooping on a woman architect allegedly by Gujarat government headed by Narendra Modi.
Top government sources said the snoopgate inquiry commission would be functional before May 16, the day results of Lok Sabha polls will be declared and the fate of Modi's prime ministerial aspiration will be known.Sources denied the government had approached the Chief Justice of India for the services of a sitting judge as head of the commission.
BJP said it had "nothing to worry" about the snoopgate probe and sought to question the Nehru-Gandhi family for carrying out snooping in the past. "How a young woman was chased, all that will come forward. There is nothing to worry about it," BJP spokesperson Meenakshi Lekhi said.
"So far as snooping goes, I can only go back and remind the Nehru family that snooping happened when Maneka Gandhi was being tracked by her mother-in-law and the IB was used to do that," she said.
Lekhi also charged Rajiv Gandhi with snooping on Giani Zail Singh after which Singh started meeting people in his lawns. "Rajiv Gandhi himself was a victim of snooping when the then cabinet secretary recorded their conversation," she said.
Snoopgate has been a heated political issue with Congress and BJP going sparring furiously over the controversy during the elections. Congress has attacked Modi for "disrespecting women" by snooping on the architect's private life.
The woman in question and her father had given a clean chit to the Modi government saying the surveillance was carried out at the family's behest.