The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology, headed by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, has questioned top officials of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) about the hacking of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Twitter handle and the Pegasus issue.
The Committee summoned top officials of MeitY on the subject of safeguarding citizens’ rights and prevention of misuse of social/online news media platforms, including special emphasis on women security in the digital space.
According to sources, when members of the panel questioned MeitY officials about the hacking of Prime Minister Modi’s Twitter handle, the officials appeared clueless about the issue and stated what was already available in the public domain.
During the proceedings, the committee’s chairman Tharoor also questioned the alleged hacking of the phone using spyware Pegasus, to which the officials replied that the matter
was under consideration, sources said.
“When Tharoor sought their cooperation, officials simply ducked the question by saying that they have nothing to say on Pegasus,” a source claimed. Modi’s Twitter handle was briefly hacked on Sunday and a tweet claiming that India has “officially adopted bitcoin as legal tender” was put out from it. The Prime Minister’s Office later said the account was immediately secured after the matter was escalated to Twitter.
This is not the first time that a Twitter handle associated with the prime minister has been compromised. In September 2020, the handle of his personal website was hacked and even then tweets promoting bitcoin, seen to be linked to a scam, were posted from @narendramodi_in.
Modi’s accounts are not alone in being targeted by hackers for pushing bitcoin, a cryptocurrency, as handles of several noted public personalities, including Barack Obama and Bill Gates besides those from fields like entertainment, have been targeted in the past.