Cash-for-query row: Lok Sabha to decide on Mahua Moitra's expulsion

NEW DELHI: Lok Sabha will take up Trinamool Congress member Mahua Moitra’s case – approving the Ethics Committee report that recommends her disqualification and the resolution to expel her – on Friday at 12 noon, Speaker Om Birla has told TMC leader Sudip Bandopadhyay in the House, on Thursday.

Moitra, facing disqualification from Lok Sabha following a recommendation from the Ethics Committee of the lower House over an alleged cash-for-query scam, will be allowed to speak when the matter comes up, as assured by the Speaker, said Bandopadhyay.

The Speaker called Bandopadhyay to his chamber on Thursday and informed him that Lok Sabha would take up Moitra's case on Friday at noon, according to what the TMC leader told TOI.

The INDIA coalition of opposition parties has jointly decided to boycott the voting in Lok Sabha after speaking on the issue when the matter comes up and stage a walkout together.

The matter was listed as item number five (5) on December 4, the opening day of the session, but was not taken up. Opposition members kept asking the Chair why the matter was being skipped. Although there was no official reason for the matter not being taken up last Monday, BJP leaders and government sources suggested that the party was in a celebratory mood after winning the state elections and hence did not want to spoil the upbeat atmosphere with an unpleasant issue like disqualification.

Results were declared on December 3, a day before Parliament opened for the Winter Session.

Moitra can be expelled only if the House votes in favor of the panel’s recommendation. This is the first time, since the Ethics Committee came into existence in the year 2000, that the panel has recommended the expulsion of a parliamentarian.

The Lok Sabha Ethics Committee adopted a report recommending Moitra’s expulsion from LS over a “cash-for-query” allegation. While six members voted in favor of the report, including suspended Congress MP Praneet Kaur, four Opposition MPs opposed it. The opposing members filed dissent notes, calling it a “fixed match” and saying the complaint filed by BJP MP Nishikant Dubey, which the panel reviewed, was not supported by a “shred of evidence”.

Dubey accused Moitra of asking questions in Lok Sabha to target the Adani Group at the behest of businessman Darshan Hiranandani in exchange for bribes. According to him, Hiranandani used her parliamentary login ID to file questions from different places, mostly Dubai.


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