Maharashtra former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday while addressing the major Pegasus row which has sparked a major controversy refuted all the allegations regarding the spyware issue and countered that it was decided by the Opposition at the Center.
During a press conference, the leader of opposition in Maharashtra highlighted that Pegasus mentions 45 countries but India is at the centre of discussion. "This is a conspiracy to discredit Indian democracy by spreading such news on the eve of the Parliament session. It is noticed that whenever India moves forward, some people try to discredit the country for different interests, he said. "Recently there were news that some media outlets received funding from China and were campaigning against India. Therefore, the Government of India made important provisions through the Telegraph Act," Fadnavis added.
Targetting the opposition at Centre, Mr Fadnavis alleged that the opposition is trying to derail it. "With the strategy of derailing this convention, the work of the convention is being hampered by spreading fabricated news," he said.
The central government has made it clear that none of its agencies is committing such illegal acts as we have a lot of strict rules in the telegraph law.
He also clarified that NSO, the company that makes Pegasus, has also denied such reports. "They have also issued a notice to this media house for publishing a baseless list," he said.
Saying that this is a deliberate conspiracy to discredit India the LoP in Maharashtra condemned the ongoing conspiracy. "We demand that the deliberate attempt to delay the work of Parliament is inappropriate and it should be stopped immediately, ”said Devendra Fadnavis.
Recalling similar conspiracy, Fadnavis said, "In 2009, Mamata Banerjee had accused the then West Bengal government of tapping phone, email and SMS. On April 26, 2010, there was a huge uproar in Parliament over the phone tapping issue. At that time, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had told Parliament that there was no need to do JPC in this regard and everything was done legally. On December 14, 2010, Manmohan Singh said that the phones of leading industrialists in the country were being tapped for national security, tax evasion and financial fraud."
"On June 22, 2011, Pranab Mukherjee sent a letter to Manmohan Singh stating that his office was being monitored. There was a big commotion then. His office was then debugged. On May 22, 1911, the then UPA government had given the right to phone tapping to the CBDT, ” added Devendra Fadnavis, who had earlier also revealed cases of phone tapping.
