Dhankhar writes to Mamata seeking records of Pegasus commission formed by state

Kolkata, Dec 20 West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar on Monday invoked Article 167 of the Constitution to seek all the records pertaining to the proceedings of the inquiry commission constituted by the state government to probe the allegations pertaining to the Pegasus spyware scandal.

The commission is headed by former Supreme Court judge, Madan B. Lokur, and ex-Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court, Jyotirmay Bhattacharya.

Taking to Twitter, the Governor wrote: "Constrained to invoke Article 167 of the Constitution to seek @MamataOfficial all record and proceedings leading to inquiry commission #Pegasus notification dated 26.07.2021 as the Chief Secretary Hari Krishna Dwivedi @IASassociation failed to provide such information."

In the letter written to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Dhankhar said, "It emanates from the penultimate and last para of the notification dated 26.07.2021 that provisions of sub-sections (2) to (5) of Section 5 of the Commissions of Inquiry Act, 1952 have been made applicable to the proceedings of 'Pegasus' inquiry commission premised on the opinion of the Governor."

"It is significant that there has been no communication whatsoever on this count from your side to this office prior to promulgation of the notification dated 26.07.2021. In such a situation, there could obviously be no formation of any opinion at my end and there has been none as a matter of fact," the Governor wrote.

"In the aforesaid situation, please take steps to forward at the earliest the entire record leading to issuance of notification dated 26.07.2021 precisely and pointedly, also advertising on all facets of formation of opinion by the Governor," he said.

The Supreme Court had on Friday passed an interim order to stay the enquiry proceedings by the judicial enquiry commission, which has been constituted by the West Bengal government to inquire into the allegations of snooping using the Pegasus spyware.

A bench headed by the Chief Justice of India, N.V. Ramana, expressed its unhappiness over the commission conducting the proceedings when the Supreme Court had constituted an independent committee to probe the matter.

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