‘Cash-for-query’ row | Oppostion dissents against ethics panel report on Mahua Moitra: Hasty, will set dangerous precedent

The panel’s report, following an inquiry into allegations against Moitra by BJP MP Nishikant Dubey, was adopted after voting with six MPs in its favour, and four from the Opposition against it.

In their dissent notes, BSP’s Danish Ali, Congress’s V Vaithilingam and Uttam Kumar Reddy, CPI(M)’s P R Natarajan and JD(U)’s Giridhari Yadav said Moitra was not given the opportunity to cross-examine businessman Darshan Hiranandani, with whom she is accused of sharing her Parliament login and password. Reddy, who was not present at Thursday’s meeting, sent his dissent note by email.

In an interview to The Indian Express, Moitra admitted that she gave her Parliament login and password to Hiranandani but denied taking cash from him, as alleged by lawyer Jai Anant Dehadrai in his complaint to CBI.

“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.

One of the notes said the recommendation of the panel for her expulsion was erroneous and was framed “purely for political reasons”.

While the Opposition leaders’ made the remarks in separate dissent notes, their arguments were largely similar.

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 argued that no documentary evidence was provided by the complainant. They said 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.

On Moitra sharing her login and password with Hiranandani, 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 3000 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.

The opposition members also questioned the committee’s recommendation for the admonition of Ali. “(Ali) cannot be singled out for breach of Rule 275(2) because you yourself have breached this rule by speaking to the press repeatedly,” one of the notes said.