US spy agency bagged court approval to spy on BJP, India …

The Bharatiya Janata Party was one of the six non-US political parties across the globe that the National Security Agency received official permission in 2010 to covertly spy upon, according to the latest document released by former NSA contractor-turned whistleblower Edward Snowden.

According to The Washington Post, the other five political parties that the NSA had authority to spy upon were Lebanon's Amal which has links to Hezbollah, the Bolivarian Continental Coordinator of Venezuela with links to FARC, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, and National Salvation Front as well as the Pakistan People's Party.

The report comes as preparations are underway for a summit meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama in Washington in September-end this year after nearly a decade America denied Modi a visa and blacklisted him.

The US denied Modi a visa in 2005 over the Gujarat riots, in which over a 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed.

Modi was the Gujarat chief minister when the riots occurred and the US state department invoked a little-known law passed in 1998 that makes foreign officials responsible for "severe violations of religious freedom" ineligible for visas.

Read: Waiting for Greenwald - why India can't stay mute on NSA spying

After the swearing-in of Modi, who led the BJP to a spectacular victory in the general election, Obama in a message vowed to work closely together with the Indian PM "for years to come".

Obama was quick to acknowledge Modi's "resounding" victory in the general elections and extended an invitation to him to visit Washington.

According to top-secret documents Snowden published through the Post on Monday, the US' Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa) court gave the NSA broad leeway in conducting surveillance upon not only these six political parties but also a list of 193 foreign governments including India and only four countries were off-limits under this programme.

"The United States has long had broad no-spying arrangements with those four countries - Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand," the Post reported on Monday.

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US spy agency bagged court approval to spy on BJP, India ...