Pegasus affidavit: Centre's stand untenable

Centre is using national security to escape scrutiny

It is becoming clear from the proceedings in the Supreme Court on the petitions on the use of the Israeli software Pegasus for hacking and surveillance on citizens that the government is stonewalling any questions about it and is unwilling to provide the answers sought by the affected citizens and the general public. It has indicated that it is not ready to answer the questions posed by the court also, and is raising issues that are not relevant to the matter. That is why the bench of Chief Justice NV Ramana and Justices Surya Kant and Hima Kohli, which is hearing the case, had to tell Solicitor General Tushar Mehta that “there cannot be any beating around the bush’’ on the issue. This was after the government refused to file a detailed affidavit and thus failed to respond to the charges of illegal spying, as sought by the court. The government’s refusal to file the affidavit is untenable.

Also read: 'Beating around the bush won't help', says SC on Centre's refusal to clarify use of Pegasus

The government said that such an affidavit in the court would be too public and would compromise national security. This would be considered an untenable argument even in a mock court of schoolchildren. The court again made it clear to the government, as it did in the last hearing, that it is not interested in matters concerning national security but that its only concern was whether any government agency has “used any method of interception other than in accordance with the law’’. This is the heart of the matter and the government has been evading the question by various ruses and in many ways from the time the charges first appeared in public. It is using the standard excuse of national security to withhold information from the court. This is the last refuge of a government that has run out of reasons.

National security was the ground invoked by the government for not giving relevant information about the Rafale fighter jet deal also in the Supreme Court in 2018. Its reasoning in the present case that a discourse on whether a particular software was used or not would alert terrorists is strange. The issue before the court is a violation of the right to privacy, and the court has made this clear. The questions raised by the petitioners and those posed by the court to the government can all be answered without reference to matters affecting national security. The CJI’s question as to how the government could reveal to a committee information that it could not reveal to the court is also moot. That punctures the government’s proposal to set up a committee to look into the charges. The court has given the government time for a rethink, and hopefully, the interim orders to be passed by it will vindicate the citizens’ case.