Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Sunday categorically blamed members of the Bharatiya Janata Party for scuttling a parliamentary panel meetin...
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Sunday categorically blamed members of the Bharatiya Janata Party for scuttling a parliamentary panel meeting last month, which was supposed to discuss the alleged surveillance of phones by use of the Pegasus spyware, The Indian Express reported.
Tharoor said that representatives of three ministries also refused to attend the meeting at the last moment. The Congress leader has written to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla asking him to take “serious cognizance” of the matter. In his letter, he said that the conduct of the officials was “unprecedented” and amounted to “breach of parliamentary privilege” and “contempt of the House”.
“It is no secret that the committee’s meeting on its established agenda was disrupted by BJP members who did not want Pegasus to be discussed,” Tharoor told the newspaper. Tharoor is the chairman of the Standing Committee on Information Technology.
The meeting, scheduled to take place on July 28, could not be held due to lack of quorum. The panel, comprising 21 members from the Lok Sabha and 10 from the Rajya Sabha, needs the attendance of 10 members to take up matters for discussion.
“It was unprecedented for 10 members [of the BJP] to attend and to refuse to sign the register in order to prevent a discussion,” Tharoor...
