A meeting of the Parliamentary Ethics Committee, called to hear Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra’s defense against the cash-for-query charges levelled against her by BJP MP Nishikant Dubey, ended on a chaotic note on Thursday. The Trinamool MP and other Opposition leaders stormed out of the meeting, accusing panel chairman and BJP MP Vinod Kumar Sonkar of asking “undignified” questions about Ms. Moitra’s personal life.
According to sources, the Opposition MPs were enraged by Mr. Sonkar’s repeated questions about Ms. Moitra’s relationship with industrialist Darshan Hiranandani. When Mr. Sonkar refused to accept the Opposition members’ suggestion to adjourn and reconvene the meeting at a later date, they demanded a vote. With five opposition MPs and five BJP MPs in attendance, the deciding vote to continue the meeting was cast by Mr. Sonkar.
Complaint against chair
At that point, Ms. Moitra and the Opposition MPs on the panel — Uttam Kumar Reddy and V. Vaithilingam of the Congress, the Bahujan Samaj Party’s Danish Ali, P.R. Natarajan of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and Giridhari Yadav of the Janata Dal (United) — walked out of the meeting.
The opposition MPs will lodge a complaint with Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla, sources said, objecting to Mr. Sonkar’s conduct.
The panel chair, however, blamed Ms. Moitra. “The committee’s agenda was to probe TMC MP Mahua Moitra’s alleged unethical conduct. Instead of cooperating, Ms. Moitra, in a fit of anger, used abusive language against the committee,” Mr. Sonkar told journalists. “The Opposition MPs supported her and also leveled allegations against me. They walked out of the panel’s meeting to escape answering questions on Darshan Hiranandani’s allegations,” he added.
‘No money trail’
When the committee met at 11 a.m., it first discussed the reports furnished by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Information Technology on the episode. The Opposition MPs pointed out that the online system of submitting questions and notices was started only in 2019, noting that there are no rules restricting the use of the system log-in to MPs only.
“It is a regular practice that the log-in and password is often used by the MP’s staff or family members who are assisting them. Sometimes the MP’s password is [shared] with up to three persons, which means that, for 700 odd MPs, abot 2,100 peoples are using this platform. How can we now hold one MP guilty in the name of national security?” one of the Opposition MPs asked during the meeting.
The opposition MPs also pointed out that no money trail had been established either in Mr. Dubey’s complaint or the suo-motto affidavit filed by Mr. Hiranandani.
‘Undignified and demeaning’
Ms. Moitra was called in at 11:30 a.m. She pled not guilty, and was allowed to tell her side of the story. She spoke at length about her former partner Jai Anant Dehradai and repeated the details which she has presented in recent media interviews. She conceded that she had shared her log-in details with Mr. Hiranandani, but denied that there had been any quid pro quo, insisting that she did not get any cash from him.
After lunch, the meeting reconvened to question Ms. Moitra. The deliberations took a turn for the worse at this point, according to sources. The Opposition members felt the chairman was asking “very personal questions” to Ms. Moitra, and are learnt to have told him repeatedly that the questions were “undignified and demeaning to the lady MP” and that he should refrain from doing so. They also said that his line of questioning was inappropriate and not relevant to the case.
Mr. Dubey, the BJP MP who filed the complaint against Ms. Moitra, accused her of trying to set a wrong narrative. He claimed that she has violated a host of rules, including publicly sharing the details of confidential Parliamentary panel proceedings. “She couldn’t handle the fact that a Dalit was a chairperson of the Ethics committee,” he said.
