Lok Sabha adjourned amid Pegasus protests

NEW DELHI: The Lok Sabha proceedings were adjourned for the day on Tuesday as the Opposition stepped up its attack over the reports of the government using an Israeli phone hacking software to hack the phones of prominent leaders, journalists and activists.

Soon after the House assembled at 3 pm, the opposition members again started raising slogans on the Pegasus snooping issue, forcing the chair to adjourn the House for the day.

The Lok Sabha will now meet on Thursday.

This was the second day of the Monsoon Session that the House could not transact any legislative business. On Monday, the Opposition had disrupted the proceedings over a variety of issues, including price rise and three farm laws.

Earlier in the day, the House was adjourned twice after the Opposition created a ruckus over snooping and other issues.

Opposition members, including from the Congress and the TMC, started raising slogans and showing placards to attack the government on the snooping issue as soon as the House met for the day at 11 am.

The proceedings lasted for barely five minutes. The same scene was witnessed when the House reassembled at 2 pm.

One of the placards read that while people are suffering from unemployment, the government is busy with “jasoosi” (spying). The slogan was in Hindi.

The Congress has demanded a probe by a Joint Parliamentary Committee after reports of Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, Union IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and Jal Shakti minister of state Prahlad Singh Patel, as also former election commissioner Ashok Lavasa and poll strategist Prashant Kishor being among those whose phone numbers were listed as potential targets for hacking through the Israeli spyware sold only to government agencies, an international media consortium has reported.

The consortium – which comprises 17 media organisations, including The Guardian, The Washington Post, Le Monde and Indian news website The Wire – published on Sunday that 38 Indian journalists, including three current Hindustan Times staffers and one from sister publication Mint, were among 180 journalists potentially targeted worldwide, including Financial Times editor Roula Khalaf, and reporters from the Wall Street Journal, CNN, New York Times, and Le Monde.

To be sure, as the methodology of the investigation explains, the presence of a number does not indicate the individual’s phone was hacked — just that it was of interest.

Leaders of various political parties also met before the start of proceedings in both houses of Parliament to decide their strategy on the issue. Several of them had also given adjournment