First discuss Pegasus and let Home Minister reply: Opposition leaders

As the Parliament standoff continued on Friday, over a dozen opposition leaders decided at a meeting that they would cooperate with the government in running the House proceedings only if the government agreed to discuss Pegasus ‘snooping’ with a reply from the home minister to the debate. They were of the opinion that the government’s listing of a discussion in the Lok Sabha on Covid-19 was a ploy to trap the opposition to end the House disruption and participate in proceedings. Therefore, the parties resolved not to cooperate with the House discussion on the pandemic.

As the opposition upped the ante, amid the Supreme Court decision to hear a bunch of petitions on Pegasus, the meeting between defence minister Rajnath Singh and Opposition leaders to break the House deadlock was yet to happen. The government and opposition get into the second half of the monsoon session with the choice of finding a solution or allowing a washout.

As the House logjam was repeated on Friday, a senior opposition floor leader is learnt to have told some MPs who wanted to know whether there would be any solution to the standoff, “The government has reaffirmed the meeting. Let us see what happens.”


Responding to a query at a news briefing on whether the government had approached the opposition and if he had met Rajnath Singh, leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge said: “Nothing! Because they told us, and they themselves telephoned me earlier, I responded, ‘as soon as you come, if you request, all the floor leaders will come here’.” Kharge then referred to why the efforts on Thursday by two ministers didn’t yield results: “Yesterday, the House leader (Piyush Goyal) and also the Minister for Parliamentary Affairs (Pralhad Joshi) came to my chamber and they also said the House should run. Then I said, “the simple way (is to) agree for a discussion, we will run (the House), we are not preventing.” Accusing the government of ‘stalling’ parliamentary discussions on the spyware, Kharge said the government should all the more agree for discussion on the Pegasus issue as the SC has admitted a petition for hearing the issue and since Israel has raided the ISO offices and France has admitted hacking bid using Pegasus.