Mumbai. Expressing serious concern over the recent leaks of WhatsApp chat by two media personalities, the Congress party in Maharashtra on Tuesday said that both these celebrities compromised national security and violated the provisions of the country’s Privacy Act. In a memorandum submitted to Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh, a delegation led by Congress spokesperson Sachin Sawant and Raju Waghmare said the alleged social media clash between Republic TV chief Arnab Goswami and former CEO of TRP agency BARC Partho Dasgupta National security has been weakened by the leaking of chat.
On his part, Deshmukh assured that he would take up the matter with the state cabinet before taking a decision. The Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government led by Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray includes Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party and Congress.
A day after the Nationalist Congress Party demanded an inquiry from the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the matter, Deshmukh said on January 18 that the government was trying to find out how Goswami had access to such highly classified details related to national security.
Sawant and Waghmare told how in a chat, Goswami tells Dasgupta how Goswami was aware of India’s plans for cross-border retaliation after the terrorist attack on the CRPF convoy on February 14, 2019.
The memorandum of the Congress states that the date and time on this chat states that this conversation took place on February 26, 2019, 3 days before the air strike in Balakot, Pakistan by the Indian Air Force.
The two leaders told Deshmukh how it was a matter of grave concern that not only did Goswami know about the national security operations of the armed forces, but he also shared it openly with Dasgupta, and it is also not known. That how many people must have reached this information.
The two leaders said, Goswami’s action is a clear violation of Section 5 of the Official Secrets Act (OSA) 1923, which forbids sharing of information about classified national security operations with anyone.
He demanded the state Home Minister to order an inquiry and register a case against Goswami for compromising on national security.
Sawant and Waghmare also raised another issue of Republic TV, in which Republic TV allegedly accessed millions using the Prasar Bharati satellite illegally without paying a fee.
The matter came up in another conversation by Goswami in which he is claiming that the then Information and Broadcasting Minister Rajyavardhan Rathore kept the matter pending until Republic TV survived the government’s action.
Sawant and Waghmare on the issue demanded an investigation into the Mumbai Police’s TRP investigation as well as the case of manipulation of TRP data of Republic TV and some other private television channels. He says that this has caused a huge loss to the Indian exchequer.
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