VIJAYAWADA: Formation of a house committee to investigate an allegation that the previous TD government used Pegasus spyware was announced on the last day of the AP assembly’s budget session by Speaker Tammineni Sitaram on Friday.
Senior YSR Congress legislator from Tirupati Bhumana Karunakar Reddy will head the panel that will go into allegations of procurement of Pegasus spyware by the Chandrababu Naidu-led government to spy on the people and political rivals.
MLAs Bhagyalakshmi, Kotharu Abbaiah Chowdhary, Kolusu Parthasarathy, Gudivada Amarnath, Merugu Nagarjuna and Maddala Giridhar would be the members of the panel.
The assembly on Monday discussed a statement made by West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee that the former TD government headed by Chandrababu had procured the Pegasus spyware from the Israeli NSO Group, while her government had rejected the offer.
The AP assembly unanimously decided to set up the house committee on the spyware case.
Finance minister Buggana Rajendranath, YSRC MLAs Kotharu Abbai Chowdary and Ambati Rambabu and ruling party MLCs in the Legislative Council alleged that the Naidu government had indulged in tapping of phones of the opposition leaders.
