NEW DELHI: After a former RAW official was charged in the US over the plot to murder Sikh separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, Congress leader and former Union minister Manish Tewari said that India would not have been in the embarrassing position if Intelligence agencies were brought under Parliamentary oversight.
Tewari moved a private member’s Bill on providing a legal basis for Intelligence services and a robust parliamentary oversight mechanism in 2011, 2021 and during Parliament’s monsoon session in 2024.
“Parliamentary oversight of Intelligence agencies is an idea whose time has come,” the Congress MP wrote in X.
“Had my private member’s Bill on providing a legal basis for our Intelligence services and a robust Parliamentary oversight mechanism that I first introduced in Parliament in the Budget Session of 2011, then again in the Winter Session of 2021 and then again on 9th August 2024 during the Monsoon session had been accepted by the successive governments from 2011 to 2024, India would not have been in the embarrassing position it finds itself internationally,” he said.
The Intelligence Services (Powers and Regulation) Bill, introduced in the Lok Sabha in 2011, was aimed at bringing “appropriate statutory basis” for Intelligence agencies. Though the Congress was in power at the Centre that time, it lapsed when Tewari took charge as a Union minister in 2012.
Tewari introduced an improved version of the bill in December 2021 after the Pegasus spyware row broke out the same year. The Bill highlighted the need for a legal framework to regulate surveillance, and an “urgent need to balance the demands of security and privacy of individuals, by ensuring safeguards against the misuse of surveillance powers of intelligence agencies”.
Robust mechanism
Congress leader Manish Tewari had moved a private member’s Bill on providing a legal basis for Intelligence services and a robust parliamentary oversight mechanism in 2011, 2021 and during Parliament’s monsoon session in 2024.