A day after the BJP members of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology staged a walk-out, the BJP urged the Lok Sabha Speaker to remove Congress MP Shashi Tharoor from the position of the chairperson of the committee. BJP MP Nishikant Dubey from Godda constituency in Jharkhand presented a privilege motion in the Lok Sabha against Tharoor on July 28, saying that he has asked for the latter's removal under Article 94 and Article 96 of the Constitution. Article 96 states that the Speaker or Deputy Speaker is not to preside while a resolution for his removal from office is under consideration. Section 94 pertains to the vacation of and resignation by the Speaker and Deputy Speaker.
Seventeen out of the 30 members of the Standing Committee have written to the Speaker stating that they don't trust the committee Chairperson Shashi Tharoor, Nishikanth Dubey said, speaking to ANI. "What he wanted to discuss in the committee could be discussed in both the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha and it (the government) was willing to discuss in both houses. Despite this, the chairperson wanted to discuss this [(Pegasus) in the committee]. Hence, I am standing here to present a privilege motion against the chairperson," Nishikant Dubey said amid uproar in the house. Dubey also sought that the Speaker remove Tharoor as the chairperson of the committee.
The Pegasus row has created ripples through the country with proceedings of both the houses of the Parliament getting stalled as opposition parties demanded discussion over it. The Pegasus row erupted when an investigation by an international media consortium revealed that more than 50,000 phone numbers from across the world were allegedly targeted through the Israeli spyware called Pegasus, which is sold only to government agencies by the NSO Group. These include around 300 Indian numbers. The Standing Committee on IT was scheduled to discuss the Pegasus snooping case on July 28.
BJP members who are a part of the Committee on July 26, had walked out from the meeting of the Standing Committee saying that the rules don't permit committee meetings to be held while Parliament is in session. The Standing Committee on IT is constituted of mostly BJP members. Independent MPs like an actor-turned-politician Sumalatha, an MP from the Mandya constituency in Karnataka, and Karti Chidambaram, Congress MP from Sivaganga in Tamil Nadu are part of the committee too. Some of its members are from the Telugu Desam Party in Andhra Pradesh and the DMK in Tamil Nadu.