Phone-tapping: What Harish Rao case tells us about KCR-era governance
The SIT produces evidence showing the prominent BRS leader that his party had monitored him and his family, leaving him startled
As it is often said, there are no permanent friends or enemies but interests in politics. And what the alleged phone-tapping by the former Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) government of Telangana has shown, the premise applies even when it comes to people within the same party and family.
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As the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the case summoned on Tuesday (January 20) T Harish Rao, a former minister of Telangana and a key leader close to the BRS patriarch and former chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, in connection with the case this week, it considered him both as a witness and a victim.
Harish, who served as a top minister in the BRS government, holding important portfolios such as finance and health, was left shell-shocked when he learned about it. The case, which also allegedly saw phones of industrialists, bureaucrats and Tollywood celebrities getting tapped, first surfaced in early 2024.
Harish Rao both a witness and victim
The investigating team, which has so far has questioned leaders of the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party, both of which were in opposition when KCR was in power between 2014 and 2023, held Harish as a witness since he is close to key people who are accused in the case. But the Siddipet MLA also found himself on the other side of the table since the probing officers found that his phone, along with those of his family members and close associates, were also tapped.
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The BRS leader first thought that the interrogators were trying to play a mind game with him to make him reveal more about the case.
As they quizzed him for seven hours, asking him about his likely connections with several key accused people in the case, including Telangana’s former Special Intelligence Branch chief T Prabhakar Rao, media personality Shravan Rao and four prominent police officers (P Radhakrishna Rao, Bhujanga Rao, Thirupathanna, and Praneeth Rao), he reportedly answered negatively, saying either he didn’t know or didn’t remember.
SIT officers produced evidence as Harish disbelieved
It was then that the officers told Harish about his and his near ones’ phones also getting tapped. The leader first laughed it off, reportedly saying, “I don’t believe that my phone and my family members’ phones were tapped.”
The officers, who came prepared, produced before him a list of calls and some other evidence of the act of tapping. They showed Harish details of his phone calls and chats with a leader, who was once a key figure in the BRS, but is a member of the BJP following his expulsion, it was told. The former minister’s reaction instantly turned into one of disbelief.
The SIT officers’ work became easier once Harish found himself in a spot of bother. As he struggled to digest the fact that he himself was not above the list of people who were under surveillance from his own party, the interrogators built up the pressure on him, asking how the BRS could know the unrevealed strategies of the opposition parties during the 2018 and 2023 elections.
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Harish perhaps found it more agonising to accept what the SIT told him about the phone-tapping since he is also the nephew of KCR. But when one takes into account the claims made publicly by none other than the former CM’s daughter, Kavitha, now an estranged leader of the BRS, that her phone, along with that of her husband D Anil Kumar’s, was tapped too, even kinship puts up a fragile defence against political games.
Harish paid price for being more popular than KTR?
One would not lose sight of the power politics at play in the BRS. Harish emerged as a top challenger to KCR’s son KT Rao, the working president of the party. Both have been multiple-term MLAs, but the former, in fact, enjoys more support in the party than the latter.
This is one reason why KCR has not been able to make the KTR party president at once and has given him the post of the working president for now; the other reason being his own health concerns. A section of the BRS also thinks that the ailing patriarch has had a habit of using Harish’s political prowess when the situation demanded and alienating him when it did not.
Union BJP minister says Harish had suspicion
While Harish expressed surprise after learning about his phone also getting tapped, Union minister Bandi Sanjay, who represents Karimnagar in Telangana in Lok Sabha, said the former suspected that his phone was being tapped.
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He even said the BRS leader had not used his mobile phone for many days due to the fear and claimed that the latter himself had said in the past that he was being targeted. Expressing anger that even his phone was not spared, Bandi demanded that the current Congress government of the state file cases against KCR, KTR and others for their alleged involvement in phone-tapping.
'KCR got phones of everyone he suspected tapped'
Professor Kurapati Venkata Narayana, a retired professor of Political Science at Telangana’s Kakatiya University and a political analyst, refused to give Harish the benefit of the doubt over the fact that his own phone was also tapped.
He said the former minister had close links with key officials who were involved in the case and used officials for his own benefit. On the tapping of his own phone, Venkata Narayana said it might have happened because neither KCR nor KTR trusts Harish.
“KCR only uses Harish when needed, but he has never trusted him from the beginning,” he told The Federal, adding that KCR got phones of his near ones, such as his daughter and nephew, tapped, only to promote his son.
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The professor also mentioned the allegations that were brought once against Harish, saying he gave funds to 30 Congress candidates during the 2018 Assembly elections, which was brought ahead by the KCR government by a year. It perhaps fuelled the mood against the leader.
“With the sole aim of elevating KTR, KCR had the phones of both his daughter Kavitha and Harish tapped,” Venkata Narayana said.
“During his nine-and-a-half-year rule, KCR had the phones of everyone he suspected tapped,” he added.
(This article was first published in The Federal Telangana)