Ashok Gehlot’s ex-aide blames him for phone tapping during 2020 political crisis

Former Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot’s former aide Lokesh Sharma has claimed that Gehlot instructed him to distribute phone recordings to media houses after handing them over to him on a pen drive during the 2020 political crisis in Rajasthan.
Sharma made the claim when he was questioned on Wednesday in connection with the phone tapping case which was filed by Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat in 2021.
In a seven-page statement, Sharma, Gehlot’s former Officer on Special Duty (OSD), recalled the sequence of events from July 2020, highlighting that he received a pen drive from the former chief minister containing call recordings, alleging that he was asked to circulate them to the media.
Sharma said that Gehlot should be interrogated in connection with the case, which will help investigators ascertain from where the call recordings were obtained and whether the call interceptions were done legally or not.
This was the first time Sharma was questioned by the police since his allegations in April. He had in April claimed that he received a purported call recording between Shekhawat and some Congress leaders about toppling the then Congress government in 2020 from Ashok Gehlot.
“I went (my) home, transferred the files from the pen drive to my laptop and from laptop to my phone, then circulated them to media houses as directed,” he said.
However, this was a complete U-turn from his earlier remark that he obtained the clips from social media, after which he distributed them to the media.
“Earlier I used to give statements I was instructed to give. I was last questioned in October 2023 when there was a Congress government (in Rajasthan) and Gehlot was CM, and I was his OSD. So, whenever I left for questioning by Delhi Police, I was instructed to tell them that I received these audio clips via social media and that’s what I used to do,” Sharma said.
“But now the entire blame is being put on me, that I got the phones tapped. I clearly said I had nothing to do with the phone tapping case and that I had merely shared the contents of the pen drive with the media. Since I was his OSD and handled his media and IT, it was my responsibility to follow the CM’s orders,” he added.
He claimed that phones of several Congress leaders, including that of then Deputy Chief Minister Sachin Pilot, were intercepted and the transcription of each call was shared with Ashok Gehlot.
Sharma is named in the 2021 case filed by Union Minister Shekhawat. In the FIR, Sharma and others have been accused of criminal conspiracy and “unlawfully intercepting telegraphic signals (telephonic conversation)”.
The crisis occurred after Sachin Pilot led a rebellion along with 18 Congress MLAs against the Ashok Gehlot government.
During the crisis, clips of telephonic conversations between Shekhawat and Congress leaders surfaced, following which Gehlot had alleged that Shekhawat was behind the attempt to topple his government.