10 parties meet to form Pegasus issue strategy
Ten opposition parties, at meeting on Tuesday, decided to move “joint adjournment notices in the Lok Sabha” as a part of a united strategy to counter the government on the Pegasus snooping row.
“We have now decided that there will be better coordination among all of us as the government doesn’t want to discuss the matter at all. We will now be giving joint adjournment notices in Lok Sabha,’’ said one of the leaders, who attended the meeting, requesting anonymity .
The meeting was attended by Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagham’s TR Baalu and Kanimozhi, Nationalist Congress Party’s Supriya Sule, Shiv Sena’s Arvind Sawant, Hasnain Masoodi of National Conference, Bahujan Samaj Party’s Ritesh Pandey,
NEW DELHI:
Kerala Congress, Communist Party of India (Marxist), Revolutionary Socialist Party and Indian Union Muslim League.
The Pegasus row erupted last Sunday before the beginning of the current monsoon session after an international investigative consortium reported that many politicians, activists, businessmen and journalists were potentially targeted by Israeli company NSO Group’s phone hacking software, Pegasus.
Earlier in the day, Mallikarjun Kharge, the leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha, speaking to the reporters outside the Parliament, said “The Telegraph Act says permission is needed for the surveillance and added that a Supreme Court monitored probe should be carried out so that the truth about the alleged hacking could finally come out.”
The government has neither confirmed nor denied whether it has purchased the spyware but has rejected reports of snooping.