Opposition leaders meet over breakfast to chalk out joint strategy on Pegasus issue

In a bid to present a united face on the Pegasus spyware issue, leaders of several opposition parties attended a breakfast meeting hosted by former Congress President Rahul Gandhi at the Constitution Club here on Tuesday. Several opposition MPs will cycle to Parliament after the meeting to highlight the issue of fuel price hike. Apart from around 100 MPs of the Congress, leaders of several opposition parties including Trinamool Congress, NCP, Shiv Sena, CPI-M, CPI, RJD and Samajwadi Party attended the meeting.

Leaders of JMM, JKNC besides IUML, RSP, KCM and RSP were also present at the meeting. Trinamool Congress, which had skipped the last meeting of Opposition leaders by Gandhi, was also present at today’s breakfast meet. Besides Gandhi, senior Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, KC Venugopal and Jairam Ramesh were present at the meeting. The meeting comes amid continued standoff between the opposition and the government over the Pegasus snooping issue with the opposition demanding a discussion in Parliament and a Supreme Court monitored probe in the matter. The government is, however, saying that this is a non-issue and does not want it to be discussed in Parliament. Leaders of 17 opposition parties were invited at the breakfast meeting, but the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) did not attend. Kharge said leaders of various parties have been invited for the meeting and are expected to discuss issues like Pegasus, farmers’ matter, and the need for a joint Parliament strategy. “Nobody in the government is listening. So we have decided to get together. The opposition is united and we are all together,” Kharge said at the meeting. Among the leaders who attended the meeting were Kalyan Banerjee, Mohua Moitra (TMC), Sanjay Raut and Priyanka Chaturvedi (Shiv Sena), Manoj Jha (RJD), Kanimozhi (DMK) and Ram Gopal Yadav (SP).