Pegasus link to Maharashtra: Congress seeks probe

Maharashtra Congress has demanded a thorough probe by the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government to find out if there was any Pegasus link in the state and why a team of its publicity department had gone to Israel during the Devendra Fadnavis regime which was in power till October 2019

Maharashtra Congress has demanded a thorough probe by the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government to find out if there was any Pegasus link in the state and why a team of its publicity department had gone to Israel during the Devendra Fadnavis regime which was in power till October 2019.

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The demand has been raised by the state Congress in the wake of the report that spyware Pegasus, which is sold by NSO Group of Israel, may have been used to conduct surveillance on around 300 Indians including cabinet ministers, opposition leaders, scientists and journalists. State Congress’s general secretary and spokesperson Sachin Sawant said the state government should investigate to find out if snooping and phone tapping took place in Maharashtra using Pegasus software during Fadnavis government.

“The illegal and unauthorised phone tapping done by IPS officer Rashmi Shukla, who headed state intelligence department during Fadnavis government, is being probed and the truth will soon come to the fore. But there are also doubts if there are any Maharashtra links to Pegasus leaks and if any IPS officer posted at Mantralaya was working on it. A few officials from the office of the director general of information and public relations (DGIPR) of the state had visited Israel during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The questions including if they got any training, by whose permission they had gone, did they submit any report to the government, how many times did they go to Israel, were there any scheduled meetings in Israel, had the government any correspondence with NSO or any presentation was made to the state government need to be answered. A probe into the issue will throw light on these questions,” Sawant said.

He added that Congress leader and former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Digvijay Singh had, in January 2020, alleged that a few officials in Maharashtra were involving in tapping. “We are now demanding a probe in this issue. The snooping and tapping of phones using Pegasus and alleged role of the Central government is very serious in nature. We suspect that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled states would have been directed by the Centre on the similar lines. The tapping that took place during Fadnavis government is one of such routine practice in BJP-ruled governments,” he said.

The Nationalist Congress Part (NCP) has slammed the Centre over revelations related to Pegasus hacking. State NCP president Jayant Patil on Monday said it is a breach of privacy if authorised by the Central government and if not it is a cyberattack on sovereignty of the country. “There is only 1 agenda. Did GOI authorize #Pegasus on any part of civil society? If yes - it’s a shocking state-sponsored breach of privacy & abuse of freedom. If not - it’s a cyber attack on India’s sovereignty which we must know & then fight together. Choose (sic),” Patil tweeted on Monday.

Party’s national spokesperson Nawab Malik said there must be an investigation and responsibility be fixed on those involved in it. “Nothing is more serious than illegal snooping. The company (NSO Group) has clarified that they sell their software only to governments and not to private organisations. If it is not sold to a private organisation, which agency of the country snooped upon journalists, opposition leaders, ministers, judges, lawyers? This needs to be investigated. If done by the government, there’s nothing bad than this and if not, then the responsibility of those officers or agencies involved in it be fixed and action must be taken,” Malik said.

The BJP, however, played it down. “The veracity of Pegasus-related reports has neither been proved nor the source of the information been revealed. When the source and validity of the original story is under doubts, there is no point in commenting on any side links related to it,” said Maharashtra BJP’s vice-president Madhav Bhandari.