Five opposition MPs submitted dissent notes against the adoption of a report by the Lok Sabha Ethics Committee recommending the expulsion of TMC MP Mahua Moitra from the House in the ‘cash-for-query’ matter, calling the probe a “fixed match” by a “kangaroo court”.
They alleged that the panel, which mostly comprised of members of the ruling BJP, conducted its probe in “unseemly haste” and framed “purely for political reasons”.
The Ethics committee, headed by BJP MP Vinod Kumar Sonkar, adopted its report recommending Moitra’s expulsion, after voting with six MPs in its favour, and four from the Opposition against it.
The members of the panel who submitted dissent notes against the adoption of the committee report included – PR Natarajan (CPIM), Danish Ali (BSP), Ve Vaithilingam (Congress), Uttam Kumar Reddy (Congress) and Girdhari Yadav (JDU). While Natarajan, Ali, Yadav and Vaithilingam were physically present on Thursday at the meeting, Reddy emailed his dissent note, reports PTI.
In their dissent notes, the MPs said that the TMC MP was not given the opportunity to cross-examine businessman Darshan Hiranandani, CEO of Hiranandani Group, with whom she is accused of sharing her parliamentary login ID and password.
“The alleged bribe-giver Mr Hiranandani is a key player in this case, having given a vague ‘suo motu’ affidavit with no details. Without the oral evidence and cross-examination of Mr Hiranandani as demanded by Ms Moitra in writing and indeed as demanded by the law of a fair hearing, this enquiry process is a farce and a proverbial ‘kangaroo court’,” the dissent notes said, as quoted by The Indian Express.
On the accusations that Moitra had shared the login and password with Hiranandani, the Opposition MPs pointed to the absence of rules regarding that. “All of us use assistants, interns, relatives and friends for help in parliamentary work… At any point, some 3,000 persons or more are having the portal login for a combined 800 odd MPs of both Houses of Parliament,” the notes said.
“Moitra has already said she used only typing services for her questions from Hiranandani’s office and the OTP came to her iPad/laptop/phone – thus there was no scope for any unsupervised access. The charge of national security is patently absurd. If the NIC portal is so secret then rules should have been framed and access from foreign IP addresses should have been blocked,” they said.
One of the notes said the recommendation of the panel for her expulsion was erroneous and was framed “purely for political reasons”.
Hitting out at advocate Jai Anant Dehadrai, whom Moitra referred to as ‘jilted ex’ in a post on social media, the MPs said, “…complainant (Dehadrai) had history of acrimonious personal relationship with Moitra and this fact was nowhere disclosed in the complaint, thereby demonstrating malafide intention at the threshold.”
“It is not the job of the Ethics Committee to be a platform to settle personal vendetta scores. This will set a dangerous precedent and open up MPs to all sorts of harassment by interested parties in future,” the notes said.
They further argued that “no documentary evidence” was provided by the complainant.
Moitra had already given an exact list of items received, which included “one scarf, some small items of makeup, availing of a car and driver on few outstation trips and one set of architectural drawings for her Government official residence”, none of which violated of any code of ethics for MPs, the Opposition MPs said.
The opposition members also asked how the committee is recommending “admonishing” Ali for speaking against the “derogatory questioning” of Moitra.
“All of us walked out in protest and it was incumbent upon us to make people aware of the unparliamentary method of enquiry being adopted inside. Kunwar Danish Ali cannot be singled out for breach of Rule 275(2) because you yourself have breached this rule by speaking to the press repeatedly,” they said.