HYDERABAD: In what comes as a major embarrassment for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the security at its national executive was breached by an intelligence department officer of the Telangana state police whose actions forced the BJP top brass to declare that they had no secrets to keep, and had the Chief Minister wanted to attend their event, he would have been welcome to do so.
“We would have been happy to share the copies of the resolutions with them, had they wanted them,” Union minister G. Kishan Reddy and state BJP president Bandi Sanjay Kumar, accompanied by Union minister Piyush Goel, told reporters. Kishan Reddy was answering a question on the breach of security in the tightly controlled environment at HICC, the venue for the BJP’s national executive meeting.
The incident occurred late in the morning, just about 20 minutes before Union home minister Amit Shah was to move an all-important political resolution. The intelligence wing officer managed to get a copy of the resolution, took images of the document and transmitted it using WhatsApp to his superior officers. Though he was caught soon after, his phone confiscated, and was kicked out of the HICC, the incident was an embarrassment for the BJP, and the security apparatus that enveloped the venue.
Even more galling for the BJP was the information that the intelligence official managed to get what sources said was a pass that granted him access to several areas of the venue from the organisers – the state unit of the party.
Kishan Reddy said the state police was in-charge of the security matters, and as far as the BJP was concerned, it was a matter of illegal entry. “The police are responsible for security. If K. Chandrashekar Rao wanted, we would have sent him copies (of the resolutions),” he said.
Goel said the BJP believed in transparency and had always done so even at its previous party events.
