NEW DELHI: India's 81-year-old prime minister does not own a mobile phone or use personal email, giving New Delhi “no cause for concern” about new US hacking revelations, his office said Friday.

The Guardian newspaper reported Friday that US spies eavesdropped on the phone conversations of 35 world leaders after White House, Pentagon and State Department officials gave them the numbers.

The new revelations, based on a classified document provided by intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, come amid fury from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose communications were allegedly targeted. Asked if Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was concerned, his spokesman replied: “The prime minister doesn't use a mobile phone and he doesn't have an email account.

“His office uses email, but he has no personal email... We have no information and no cause for concern,” he added.

India has witnessed a mobile telecom boom in the past decade with the latest figures from the national telecom regulator showing 876 million phone connections in the country of 1.2 billion people.

But the industry is also at the heart of one of the worst graft scandals afflicting Singh's embattled administration with ex-telecom minister A. Raja on trial over allegedly corrupt allocation of phone licences in 2008.

India initially played down the impact of spying by the US National Security Agency, saying that information gleaned from its activities had helped prevent terror attacks and loss of life.

But following allegations that computers and phones in the Indian embassy and its UN mission in New York had been compromised, it took a slightly tougher line, saying it would seek answers from Washington.