Ahead of budget session of Parliament starting on January 31, a new report claiming that the Indian government got the Pegasus surveillance software from Israel has raised the political temperature with the opposition Congress accusing the BJP of hijacking democracy and demanding that prime minister Narendra Modi come clean.
“Modi Govt bought Pegasus to spy on our primary democratic institutions, politicians and public. Government functionaries, opposition leaders, armed forces, judiciary all were targeted by these phone tappings. This is treason. Modi Govt has committed treason,” Rahul Gandhi said.
“It has confirmed what the Indian National Congress has long asserted – The Modi Government is the deployer and executor of the illegal and unconstitutional snooping and spying racket through Israeli surveillance spyware Pegasus and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is himself involved!”
The Congress said this was a brazen hijack of democracy and an act of treason.
The Congress stated things to demand the PM’s accountability – “Modi Government purchased Pegasus Spyware in 2017 and other military technology as the centrepieces of a package including weapons and intelligence gear worth roughly $2 billion from Israel during PM Modi’s visit. It is not a coincidence that the Budget of National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) reporting to NSA went up from Rs 33 crore to Rs 333 crore in 2017-18; the spyware breaches the WhatsApp as also the phone and is able to turn over the cellphones camera and microphone to capture all activities in the vicinity of the phone, besides hacking all the security features of the phone, including listening to, and sending passwords, contact lists, calendar events, text messages, and live voice calls; It also can plant fake material into the cellphone to falsely incriminate people;
“Modi Government deployed Pegasus spyware for snooping and spying upon Rahul Gandhi and his staff members, ex PM Deve Gowda, ex CMs Siddaramaiah and HD Kumaraswamy; ex BJP Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia; BJP Cabinet Minister Prahlad Singh Patel, his wife and staff; IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnav and his wife; OSD of Union Minister Smriti Irani; Abhishek Banerjee, MP and nephew of Mamta Banerjee; Praveen Togadia , former head of VHP and others; Supreme Court judges; Election Commission of India; CBI Director Alok Verma and his wife and family; KK Sharma, head of BSF; BSI IG Jagdish Maithani; RAW officer Jitender Kumar Ojha and his wife; Indian Army Officers Col Mukul Dev and Col Amit Kumar.
“The Pegasus spyware target list also included advocates, activists and even journalists of prominent media organisations including The Hindu, The Indian Express, Hindustan Times, India Today, The Mint, The Wire, Economic and Political Weekly, TV18, The Tribune, Outlook, DNA, Newsclick, Frontier TV and many others. The Government duped and deceived Parliament,” said the Congress.