The row over the IT committee doesn’t seem will die down anytime soon. Both sides have expressed their reservation about each other with the office of the Lok Sabha Speaker. While the ruling party MP Nishikant Dubey has moved a breach of privilege motion against Shashi Tharoor and that all the BJP MPs have also expressed their intent to move a motion of no confidence against the Congress leader, Tharoor himself met the Speaker recently and submitted a letter as to how the government has been trying to stifle the authority of the standing committee.
In a recent interview to an agency, the Lok Sabha MP from Thiruvananthapuram has once again reiterated that last-minute excuses were made by officials of the home and IT ministry in a bid to scuttle the discussion on the contentious Pegasus issue in the course of the standing committee meeting on July 28.
The government has now blunted the claims made by Tharoor. Top sources in the government say that the committee was informed well in advance about the unavailability of the officials because of the ongoing monsoon session of Parliament.
The letter written by the Union home secretary to the committee has exclusively been accessed by CNN News18. In the letter written by Ajay Bhalla, it was communicated to the IT committee and chairman that due to a prescheduled meeting, the Union home secretary would not be available to attend this meeting.
The letter written to Tharoor is marked of the date July 27. Sources in the home ministry claimed that the narrative built by Tharoor and the other opposition MPs to show that the government made a last-minute cancellation is “false and baseless”.
CNN News18 has also exclusively accessed the communication by the IT ministry to the committee. A senior official of the ministry wrote to the IT committee on July 23, which is five days before the scheduled meeting, expressing his regret for being unable to attend the meeting due to the ongoing monsoon session that involves preparing for questions and other Parliament-related works.
While the official requested for the same to be communicated to chairman Tharoor, he also requested if the committee could consider holding meeting on the issue at a later date post the Parliament session.
While calling it unprecedented for 10 members of the ruling BJP who came to the meeting on the July 27 but refused to sign the register in order to prevent a discussion, Tharoor had said, “Three officials were supposed to be present to testify before the committee but have been instructed not to attend making last-minute excuses which is a grievous assault on the prerogative of Parliamentary committees to summon witnesses.”
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