Pegasus row: Centre to form committee to look into snooping charges

The Centre on Monday "unequivocally" denied before the Supreme Court charges of snooping citizens, activists and politicians through Pegasus spyware but agreed to set up a committee of experts to examine all aspects of the matter and to "dispel wrong narrative raised by vested interests"

It maintained that a group of PILs filed by journalist N Ram and others were "based on conjectures and surmises or on other unsubstantiated media reports or incomplete or uncorroborated material".

In a two-page affidavit, the Union government also contended that the question raised in the pleas before the top court stood already clarified on the floor of the Parliament by the Minister of Railways, Communications and Electronics and Information Technology of India, Government of India.

The government further said unsubstantiated reports cannot be the basis for invoking the writ jurisdiction of the top court.

"Nothing further needs to be done at the behest of the petitioner, more particularly when they have not made out any case," it said.

A bench led by Chief Justice N V Ramana asked the Centre to clarify by Tuesday if it wanted to file a further detailed affidavit as the petitioners claimed the government has not come clean on use of Israel's Pegasus spyware.

In a written reply in Lok Sabha, Minister of State Rajeev Chandrasekhar said last week that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has not allocated any budget to purchase software to “intercept, monitor, decrypt any information generated, transmitted, received or stored in any computer resource, as permitted under Section 69 of the Information Technology Act”.

Earlier, in the Rajya Sabha, the Union Defence Ministry also said it had not had any transaction with NSO Group.