The government on Wednesday said that no civilian, including a journalist, had any prior knowledge about the abrogation of Article 370 that accorded special status to Jammu and Kashmir. The Article was revoked on August 5, 2019, months after BJP stormed to power in Lok Sabha elections.

“No sir,” Union Minister of State for Home G Kishan Reddy told the Rajya Sabha when asked whether civilians were privy to knowledge about the abrogation of Article 370 prior to the information being shared with Parliament, reports PTI.

The clarification came following the leak of purported WhatsApp chats between Republic TV owner Arnab Goswami and former CEO of Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) Partho Das Gupta. The alleged leaked chats show that Goswami knew when the Article 370 abrogation discussion would happen.

The WhatsApp messages that leaked online were part of a supplementary chargesheet filed by Mumbai Police in the TRP scam case. The Opposition was quick to launch attacks on the government following the leak saying that it raised ‘serious questions’ about national security.

Senior party leader Shashi Tharoor tweeted, “The leaked @WhatsApp chats reveal 3 reprehensible things requiring serious inquiry: leaking of military secrets to a TV channel for its commercial purposes; a ‘nationalist’ gloating over the death of 40 jawans as an ‘attack we have won like crazy’,& fraudulent manipulation of TRPs.”