Pilibhit effect: Parties stock up on spy ware

What with Varun Gandhi’s indictment in a hate speech case, political parties’ agents are flocking to dealers of spying equipment so that they can record evidence against their opponents. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Apr 3, 2009, 02:09:45 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

Spycams, voice bugs and tracker devices are in great demand in the political arena these days.

What with Varun Gandhi’s indictment in a hate speech case, political parties’ agents are flocking to dealers of spying equipment so that they can record evidence against their opponents. Also, many leaders are using technology to keep track of party members.

Last week, a man claiming to be the representative of a Congress candidate from Andhra Pradesh bought 30 spycams and voice bugs for Rs 7 lakh. “It is a war situation. If we can get any evidence of the rivals’ malpractice based on which the Election Comm-ission can initiate action, it would be money well spent,” said the representative, who refused to give out his name.

“All of them (parties) want gadgets that capture high quality content of 520 television frames which can be used as clinching evidence in a court of law,” said Sanjeev Deshwal, director of a Delhi-based detective agency. Deshwal said five candidates from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have already hired him to record evidence.

Another detective agency head Kunwar Vikram Singh said many candidates are worried about dissidence within rather than other contestants. A BJP candidate bought GPS equipment to track vehicles of his workers. “It will help us keep a tab on whether workers are actually campaigning,” said B.S. Ram Mohan, who had come to buy the equipment.

Shops selling spying equipment at Palika Bazaar are getting more enquiries from political outfits than ever before. “You can call it Varun effect. Everyone has realised, that strong evidence against opponents is a huge benefit. For us, it has meant 15 to 20 per cent increase in sales,” said Rajinder Jain, a shop-owner at Pailka.

Most candidates go for the Chinese equipment as it costs 40 to 45 per cent less than the American products.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

Check India news real-time updates, latest news on Hindustan Times and more across India.