BJP National Spokesperson Sambit Patra addresses a press conference at the party headquarters in New Delhi on Saturday. (PTI)

The Congress had on Friday cited the two audio tapes, purportedly featuring Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat and rebel Congress MLA Bhanwarlal Sharma conspiring to topple the Ashok Gehlot government, seeking their arrest. The Special Operation Group (SOG) of the Rajasthan Police has registered criminal cases in the matter.

The BJP has described the audio clips as “manufactured”, and Shekhawat has said the voice in the clips was not his.

Seeking a CBI probe into the “saga of illegalities and concocted lies” as well as the “unconstitutional” tapping of phones by the Rajasthan government, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra Saturday said that senior Congress leaders, including Gehlot, have been calling the audio clips authentic, though the FIRs registered by the police do not say so.

“These are serious questions that we want to ask the Congress high command and Ashok Gehlot. Was phone-tapping done? Assuming that you’ve tapped phones, was the SOP followed? Did the Congress government in Rajasthan use unconstitutional ways to save themselves?” Patra asked at a press conference.

Were phones of people in politics being tapped, he added. “Is it not a case of veiled emergency in Rajasthan?”

Patra also accused the Congress of having a history of “phone tapping and bugging”, going on to refer to a row in the previous UPA government.