Cong accuses govt of evading query on purchase of Pegasus

Opposition leaders accused the Union government on Monday of evading a simple question of whether it used the Pegasus spyware to snoop on Indian citizens after the Centre told the Supreme Court that it will set up a committee of experts to investigate the allegations.

The government’s stand came following the week when it had to cut short a torrid monsoon session of Parliament, where opposition MPs were unrelenting in calling for deeper investigations and answers from the government.

Gopal Aggarwal, national spokesperson of BJP, said the government has already said that “lawful interception is its right” and “no one can deny it the power to combat terrorism and other crimes through surveillance.”

“There are two things… government has the right of interception and it is a matter of internal security. Now, if there is an unauthorised interception, only the legal investigation can find it out. Congress is trying to make it a political issue than trying to investigate (it),” Agarwal said.

‘Govt beating around the bush’

Reacting to Aggarwal, Congress national spokesperson Gaurav Vallabh said that the government was just beating around the bush and the magnitude of the problem was so big that it needed a high-level investigation and not just an FIR.

“Our question has been same (from the beginning) … that whether government purchased Pegasus or not. Why is this question not being answered simply in yes or no?” he asked.

Vallabh added that the defence ministry is saying that we had not purchased it, but why does the Prime Minister not say that this was not purchased for any ministry at all.

“Also, why did the budget of national security council secretariat have an exponential increase under the research and development heading? What has the government of India done with that money?” Vallabh questioned. He added that if the government has used it, then there arises another question as to why did they use a terror combating weapon against democracy of the country. “But the government is dodging the question. They are trying to answer it in a way that if one asks them that did they heat up the water, they say no we boiled it. The issue needs a one-line answer that whether they purchased the spyware or not.”

THE GOVERNMENT HAS ALREADY SAID THAT ‘LAWFUL INTERCEPTION IS ITS RIGHT’, BJP LEADER GOPAL AGGARWAL SAID