New Delhi:
The union government has cleared an inquiry into whether Narendra Modi and his government in Gujarat illegally spied upon a young woman architect in 2009.
Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde professed that "no vendetta, no revenge, no politics" underpin the Centre's decision.
Mr Modi's party, the BJP, vehemently disagreed.
"The commission is legally suspect and will be challenged in court," tweeted senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley, describing the Centre's decision as a transgression into the Gujarat government's domain.
The Centre has said a committee headed by a former Supreme Court judge will investigate the controversy referred to as "Stalk-Gate." But in an attempt to counter the BJP's tirade, the government has said that the enquiry will also cover how Mr Jaitley's cellphone records were illegally accessed by a private detective in Delhi, and whether the BJP's Virbhadra Singh was spied upon when he was chief minister of Himachal Pradesh.
Stalk-Gate rests upon phone conversations secretly recorded in 2009 by GL Singhal, a former senior police officer in Gujarat. The tapes allegedly establish that a "saheb" or big boss in Gujarat sought information on the movements and phone calls of the woman architect. The Congress alleges that the "sahib" was Mr Modi.
Earlier this week, the controversy proved to be scalable when a news website, gulail.com, said it had accessed more conversations that prove the woman was spied upon by Gujarat officials even when she was in Bangalore.
The BJP has not refuted that the woman was followed by police officers when she traveled to Gujarat; the party says her father, who was known to Mr Modi, was worried about her safety and asked for her to be protected. Last month, a letter from the woman's father verified that claim, added that the woman was aware of her surveillance, and requested the National Commission for Women to ignore demands for an investigation out of respect for her privacy.
In an attempt to stem the damage, Mr Modi's government said a retired judge in Gujarat would investigate the allegations that laws were blatantly violated by the state's officials.