Trinamul Congress Rajya Sabha MP Shantanu Sen was suspended a day after he tore up the paper containing the statement prepared by Union Inforrmation and Technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on the Pegasus issue.
On Thursday, Sen rushed into the Well of the Upper House, grabbed the papers from Vaishnaw and tore it up.
Rajya Sabha Chairman Venkaiah Naidu announced his suspension within moments of V Muraleedharan, minister of state for Parliamentary Affairs, moving the motion on this.
Sen was asked to leave the House after the motion was passed as TMC MPs erupted in protests due to which Rajya Sabha was adjourned till 12.30 pm.
Also, several opposition leaders including Jairam Ramesh, Tiruchi Shiva, Sukhendu Sekhar Ray and Anand Sharma met Naidu over the matter asking why Muraleedharan was allowed to speak and move the motion against Sen when it wasn’t listed in the business of the day.
On Thursday West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee said that she had got an appointment with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and she will be meeting him during her Delhi visit.
She had pilloried the Modi-led central government over the Pegasus spyware issue and even taped the camera of her phone alluding to snooping as reports suggest that her nephew and Diamond Harbour MP Abhishek Banerjee and her party’s poll strategist Prashant Kishor was also on the target list.
Miss Banerjee had also found an analogy between Watergate incident which led to the resignation of then US President Richard Nixon and Snoopgate referring to the recent befuddling evidence of a web of spying through an Israeli spyware on several politicians, journalist, activists, judges and bureaucrats.
The Union government had vehemently denied any kind of phone-tapping or spying saying there are specific rules to that and addressing the House, Vaishnaw had said that “the press report appeared a day before the Monsson Session of Parliament. This can’t be a coincidence. The reports of 18 July 2021 are also an attempt to malign the Indian democracy with its well-established institutions”.