Mamata Banerjee on Friday added two key national issues, alleged Pegasus snoopgate and the ownership of PM-Cares Fund, to her campaign narrative for the Bhowanipore bypoll, along with Tripura BJP government’s imposition of prohibitory orders in Agartala during Puja and Diwali this year.
The Bengal chief minister wasted no time in adding the two crucial issues to the Bhowanipore mix, a day after proceedings in the judiciary had brought both back in the news.
“My phone, your phone, everything has gone to Pegasus. Pegasus is dangerous…. It does not only record and transmit audio, it takes and sends photos, video…. I found out fully after I was talking to PK (poll consultant Prashant Kishor) and Abhishek (Banerjee, her nephew and Trinamul Congress’s Number Two) in my Kalighat office ahead of the election. I was shown (later) how I was tapped through their phones, which were tapped,” said Mamata at a public meeting in Sambhunath Bazaar, near Balwant Singh’s Eating House in Bhowanipore.
According to digital forensics conducted by Amnesty International’s Security Lab, Trinamul’s national general-secretary Abhishek and poll consultant Kishor were among the numerous targets of the hack.
Her remarks came a day after Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana said the Supreme Court would pass orders next week on the constitution of an “expert committee” to probe allegations that the Centre had used the Israeli spyware Pegasus to illegally snoop on citizens.
“Tap one phone and you can (indirectly) tap a thousand…. They do this using the phone cameras, which are kept on by them. You think you have switched off the phone and nobody can hear anything. That’s not the case. Even through a switched off phone… nothing is safe…. In the future they will scan our brains. Nothing can be put past them,” added Mamata.
Mamata quickly moved on to bring up the fact that the Prime Minister’s Office had told Delhi High Court on Thursday that the PM Cares Fund is not a Government of India fund, but a charitable trust whose collections do not go to the Consolidated Fund of India, and that it does not come under the purview of the Right to Information Act.
“But government employees were made to contribute to it. Corporates also contributed. Lakhs of crores were deposited,” said the chief minister.
She went on, for the third consecutive day, to bring up the imposition of prohibitory orders in West Tripura through Durga Puja till Diwali this year, to lambast the BJP over its divisive and “false” campaign against her that she was not allowing people to celebrate Hindu festivals in Bengal.
