PIL In Bombay High Court Questions Maharashtra Official’s 2019 Israel Tour: Claims It Was to Acquire Snooping Software
(Judicial Quest News Network)
A public Interest Litigation has been file in Bombay High Court seeking a Judicial probe into a study tour to Israel that was okayed by the Maharashtra government in 2019 in which a delegation of senior officials from the Maharashtra Director General of Information and Public Relations (DGIPR) went to Israel for a study tour in 2019 was to “Acquire spying software like Pegasus”.
The petitioner has alleged that this was aimed at procuring software and use it for phone tapping. A Division Bench of Chief Justice Dipanker Datta and Justice GS Kulkarni, on Thursday issued, notices to the state Directorate General of Information and Public Relations (DGIPR) and five officials.
The petition has been filed by RTI Activists Laxman Bura and Dig amber Gentyal who hails from Ahmednagar District of Maharashtra.
Several rules regarding the sanctioning of such foreign tours were violated in the process the PIL alleged.
According to the submissions that Israel does not have any expertise on web media (The subject of the study tour) that the state government officials could have been benefited from. Said the Advocate Tejeh Dande.
The actual intention of the tour was to acquire the spying software like Pegasus.
On November 15,2019 after the Assembly Elections in Maharashtra, a delegation of five chosen senior officials of the DGIPR were sent to Israel for 10 days study tour titled as ‘Advance Web Media’. The PIL said.
The petitioner submits that it appears under the garb of media management training and other allied activities, the Government was sending its officials to bring other modalities in the country misusing them during election process booth capturing electronic voting machine hacking software etc. More importantly it appears that there is a nexus between the phone tapping case and the visit of the Israel tour which is now public knowledge.
The petitioners stated that an amount of Rs14 Lakhs which was sanctioned for the tour, did not have any approval from the Ministry of Finance implying that it was in contravention of the GR and thus a complete misuse of the public money.
Through the response received on their RTI applications seeking details of the tour, the petitioner discovered that the General Administration Department of the State within the stipulated time.
The study tour allegedly did not make out any prominent feature or reveal any substantial and specific importance so as to go to Israel thereby delegating certain qualified officers from the office of DGIPR.
In view of this the petitioner’s prayer to the Court to call for records regarding the visit and inform the High Court as to what special knowledge officials have acquired and how it will benefit the country.
