Monsoon session: Govt, Opposition parties refuse to budge on Pegasus

Further disruption of Parliament’s Monsoon Session appeared inevitable with both the government and the Opposition digging into their respective positions.

At a breakfast meeting hosted by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, the Opposition parties spelt out the bottom line: If the government wants to run the rest of the session, it will have to agree to a debate on Pegasus, even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi renewed his attack on the Opposition, terming repeated adjournments forced by it “an insult to the Constitution… to democracy and to the public”, suggesting there is no change in the government’s stance — that the Pegasus issue is irrelevant.

“Parliament is being insulted by the acts of the Opposition in both Houses. The person who snatched the paper and tore it is not even penitent about what he did,” Modi told Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MPs at a meeting. He focused on the conduct of the Opposition, rather than the issue they sought to raise. In response, the Opposition appeared resolute in unity.

“The single motive to invite you (to breakfast) is that we should unite. The more this voice unites, the more powerful it will become, the more difficult it will become for the BJP and RSS to suppress this voice,” Gandhi said at the meeting. “We should remember the foundation of unity and it is important that now we start to come up with the principles of this foundation,” he told those gathered.

This could be among the first moves to get the Opposition together on a common slate ahead of the 2024 general elections. Although many parties have differences with the Congress, like the Trinamool Congress and the Samajwadi Party, and many have differences with each other, like the Left parties and the Congress, which are at loggerheads in Kerala, Tuesday’s meeting was attended by all, barring the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

The government says the Opposition is wasting the collective time of Parliament by not allowing it to function and merely wants an issue to disrupt the two Houses. IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has said in a statement in Parliament that checks and balances against the kind of snooping alleged by the Opposition is impossible in India’s legal framework. But it is obvious that the government is caught in a cleft stick: If it agrees to a discussion, it will have to accept or deny government role in the use of the intrusive phone-tapping technology. If it does not agree to a discussion, it will be charged with hustling important legislation through without a discussion.

TMC MP Derek O’Brien said as much, when he tweeted that the government was passing laws at the speed it takes to assemble “papri chaat”. The PM called his remarks “derogatory”. Modi also criticised the conduct of TMC MP Santanu Sen, who snatched the IT minister’s papers from his hand, as he was about to make a statement on the Pegasus scandal. MP Sukhendu Sekhar Roy said: “If a dozen Bills are passed in the Rajya Sabha amid uproar… is this a parliamentary system? Government should answer this first…”

Adding to the pressure is the prospect of judicial action. The Supreme Court is set to hear a plea on the issue on August 5. In tandem, the Editors Guild of India also filed a case in the apex court on Tuesday, challenging the constitutional vires of electronic surveillance, hacking and use of spyware, and the existing legal architecture for surveillance, in light of the gigantic leaps in technology and surveillance capabilities. The guild has sought a court-appointed and monitored special investigation team to look into every aspect of the alleged use of Pegasus by the Centre against Indian citizens, especially journalists.

The government is pushing ahead with its legislative business even amid uproar. At this rate, once it has cleared emergent business like the passage of Ordinances (an Ordinance to ban strikes in defence ordnance factories was passed on Tuesday) the chances are the monsoon session will come to an end earlier than the scheduled date of August 13.

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