The supreme court on Thursday asked the centre to respond within 10 days on Ratan Tata’s petition on the leakage of tapes of his conversation with corporate lobbyist Niira Radia.

The division bench of justices G S Singhvi and A K Ganguly issued notices to union home secretary G K Pillai, CBI, income tax department and finance ministry asking them to file a reply through an affidavit. The bench said that it wanted to hear the Attorney General GE Vahanvati who is appearing in the matter. It also made the two magazines- Open and Outlook, which had published the conversations, parties to Tata’s petition and issued notices to them. The petition, however, did not make the magazines parties into the matter.

Appearing for Tata, senior advocate Harish Salve said he did not want any injunction against the media to which the bench responded by saying that since it was examining the issue, it wanted to hear them too. Tata has sought action against those involved in the leakage of tapes alleging that such an act amounts to infringement of his fundamental Right to Life, which includes right to privacy under Article 21 of the Constitution. He has sought a direction to the government to probe leakage of tapes and stop their further publication.

Salve contended that the public disclosure of the conversations would violate Tata's right to privacy. He said his concern was that the audio content of personal conversation do not reach the public domain.