Oppn's stand vindicated: Rahul on SC Pegasus order
New Delhi: Hailing the Supreme Court's order to form a committee to look into the Pegasus spyware row, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi said that the opposition's stand on the issue is "vindicated" since the judges have flagged the same concerns.
"We protested, but no reply. We stopped Parliament, but we still did not get a reply. Now our stand is vindicated. So, our questions remain the same," Gandhi said at a press conference organised after the apex court's order in Pegasus snooping case.
The Congress leader termed the top court's move to appoint a three-member panel of cyber experts to probe the alleged use of Israeli spyware Pegasus for surveillance of certain people as a "big step" and expressed confidence that truth would come out.
Gandhi also alleged that only the prime minister or the home minister could have ordered the use of Pegasus spyware. During the last Parliament session, the Opposition had jointly taken up the issue and had stalled proceedings demanding a probe, he recalled.
"We were asking three basic questions -- who authorised Pegasus, which agency, which person authorised Pegasus as we all know Pegasus cannot be bought by a private individual, it has to be bought by a government; the second question was who was it used against; final thing was, did any other country have access to information of our people," the former Congress chief said.
"We are quite happy that the Supreme Court has accepted to look into this. There is the institution of Parliament where we will raise this again and we will try to have a debate in Parliament. I am sure the BJP will not like that debate so they will make sure that debate is stalled but we will try to hold that debate," he said.
Hitting out at the government, he said, "If the PM of the nation colluded with another nation and attacked its own citizens -- which included the Chief Justice, former PMs and other Chief Ministers, leaders of opposition parties, then this is an attack on the nation."
"Did the other nation have all this data? That is a very important question. Even if this data was on the Prime Ministers' desk, then that too is totally criminal, and we will contest it," Gandhi said, adding that the prime minister is not above the nation.
Overruling virtually every argument made by the Centre, the top court said that privacy is not the singular concern of journalists or social activists but of every citizen. The three-judge bench led by Chief Justice of India NV Ramana, said, "Surveillance can have a chilling effect on the freedom of speech."
