2019 Israel Tour Of Maharashtra Officials To Acquire Pegasus Like Spyware : Plea In Bombay High Court

A division bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice GS Kulkarni, on Thursday, issued notices to the State Government, the State Directorate General of Information and Public Relations (DGIPR) and five officials, who have been named individually in the PIL, asking them to file their replies, if any, within four weeks.

The petition has been filed by one Laxman Bura and Digamber Gentyal, who call themselves social activists and hail from the Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra. Interestingly, the petition was affirmed way back on March 25, 2021 – over three months before the fresh round of controversy regarding worldwide phone tapping using the Pegasus software made headlines across the world.

The petition reads as follows:

"It appears that under the garb of media management training and other allied activities, the Government was sending its officials to bring other modalities in the country for misusing them during election process i.e. booth capturing, electronic voting machine hacking software etc," adding, "More importantly it appears that there is a nexus between the phone tapping case and the visit to Israel tour which is now public knowledge."

The tour was undertaken from November 15 to 25, 2019, when political activities in the State for the formation of State government were in full swing

While the petition itself does not mention Pegasus, the precipice dated August 2, 2021 by petitioners' Advocate Tejesh Dande seeking urgent listing of the case states,

"The entire tour is under the clouds of suspicion, as there was no great achievement, worth learning at Israel. In fact, the actual object of sending the team to Israel by breaching mandatory conditions was to acquire spying softwares like Pegasus."

The PIL alleges that the visit took place just after the State assembly elections and a delegation of few "chosen" senior officials of DGIPR was sent to Israel to study "advance web media," without approvals and breaching mandatory conditions. The petition alleges that the "study tour" did not have any prominent features to accept the invitation, and no benefits of the tour were mentioned either.

"The Maharashtra Government issued a GR on October 23, 2019 regarding the delegation's visit to Israel. It was mentioned that the State has accorded sanction as per the approval of the scrutiny committee under the Chief Secretary, GoM. The Ministry of External Affairs gave political clearance on November 1, it says," the petition reads.

It adds that as per a reply under the Right To Information Act, mandatory permission for the visit was not taken from the Finance Ministry.

"In this backdrop, the grant of Rs 14 lakh for the purpose of such tour is illegal, in contravention of the GR and a complete misuse of public money upon which is can be assumed that the delegates from the Respondent 2 (DGIPR) were sent on this study tour for achieving some other "ulterior motives" best known to the Directorate or Concerned authorites," the petition further alleges.

Permissions from the Chief Minister, Union Government or the Election Commission of India were required to be taken, and the tour also violated a host of rules for such tours set out in a State Government Resolution of December 2014, the PIL states.

"The country of Israel has an expertise in the technology of agriculture. On the contrary, the subject of the study tour was enhancement of usage of web media. It is in this backdrop that the acceptance and sanctioning of the said tour creates a reasonable suspicion on the purpose and motivation behind it," the PIL says.

The study tour was undertaken by the officials based on a September 5, 2019 invitation letter from the Consulate General of Israel in Mumbai.

The HC asked the petitioner's lawyer if the Supreme Court was adjudicating upon a similar issue.

Apart from a judicial enquiry, the petition also seeks directions from the court to check the call records pertaining to the visit and that the respondents inform the High Court as to what special knowledge the officials acquired and how it will benefit the country.