‘Need court-monitored probe into Pegasus’

New Delhi, Jul 27: Mamata Banerjee met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at his residence in Delhi on Tuesday. This was the Bengal Chief Minister’s first meeting with the Prime Minister after the acrimonious Bengal election campaign in which the two clashed frequently. After the meeting, she told reporters that there should be a Supreme Court-monitored inquiry into the Pegasus scandal involving opposition leaders, two union ministers and 40 journalists revealed as potential targets of surveillance using Israeli Pegasus spyware that is sold only to governments. The allegations have virtually blocked the monsoon session of parliament with the opposition demanding answers from PM Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah.
Ms Banerjee’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee is among the potential targets whose names have surfaced as part of a worldwide investigation by a media consortium that includes India’s The Wire. Yesterday, she announced a judicial inquiry led by former Supreme Court judges – the first since the Pegasus scandal broke – to investigate reports that many Bengal leaders were targeted.
The Chief Minister said in her meeting with PM Modi – she described it as a ‘courtesy visit’ – she had discussed the Covid situation, the supply of vaccines and medicine to the state and also a proposal to rename Bengal as Bangla. “I should not speak what the PM said,” she told reporters when pressed for details.
She said she was also supposed to meet President Ram Nath Kovind. “But the problem is they are asking me to have an RT-PCR done before meeting him. I have got both the doses though. Where will I go here,” she said.