Moitra gave me her Parliament login, password: Hiranandani to LS panel; she claims PMO drafted his letter

In a three-page affidavit submitted Thursday to the committee and released to the press by the Hiranandani Group’s corporate communication team, Darshan Hiranandani, who resides in Dubai, said Moitra “thought that the only way to attack Sh. Modi (Prime Minister Narendra Modi) is by attacking Sh. Gautam Adani and his group as both were contemporaries, and they belong to the same state of Gujarat.”

The affidavit comes days after BJP MP Nishikant Dubey wrote two letters — one to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla claiming there are allegations that Moitra took bribes to protect the interest of the Hiranandani Group, and the other to IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, urging him to investigate the IP addresses of Moitra’s log-in credentials for Lok Sabha to check if they had been accessed by someone else.

Jai Ma Durga. pic.twitter.com/Z2JsqOARCR

— Mahua Moitra (@MahuaMoitra) October 19, 2023

Hiranandani, in his affidavit, said, “Ms. Moitra drafted a few questions that would have elements to embarrass the Government by targeting the Adani group; questions that she could raise in Parliament. She shared with me her email ID as Member of Parliament, so that I could send her information, and she could raise the questions in the Parliament. I went along with her proposal.”

“She… requested me to keep supporting her in her attacks on the Adani group and provided me her Parliament login and password so that I could post the questions directly on her behalf when required,” he stated in the affidavit.

In a press release late at night, Moitra, who called Darshan “a dear friend”, claimed, “They were threatened with a total shutdown of all their businesses… They were told they will be finished, the CBI would raid them and all government businesses would stop and all PSU bank financing would be stopped immediately.”

She noted that three days ago (October 16), the Hiranandani Group put out an official press release stating that all charges levelled against them were “baseless”. “Today, an ‘approver affidavit’ has been leaked to the press… This affidavit is on a white piece of paper with no letterhead…,” she pointed out.

In a statement to The Indian Express on Tuesday, the Hiranandani Group had said, “We have always been in the business of business and not in the business of politics. Our group has always worked with the government in the interest of the nation and will continue doing so,” a spokesperson for the Hiranandani Group had said.

In his affidavit, Hiranandani also claimed that Moitra was “getting help from other people like Sucheta Dalal… who were feeding her with all kinds of unverified information relating to Sh. Gautam Adani and his companies”.

In response to social media posts on Hiranandani’s affidavit, Dalal, a journalist and Managing Editor of MoneyLife, said on X, “…the very fact that he (Darshan Hiranandani) has named me makes this whole letter and his ‘solemn’ statements a farce… I don’t know @MahuaMoitra – and I think she can confirm it. The question of helping her simply does not arise, NOR did she EVER reach out and ask me for any help either!”

Earlier, Moitra, after Dubey’s letter to the IT Minister, had asked the government to release location and log-in details of all MPs along with their call detail records. “All parliamentary work of MPs done by PAs, assistants, interns, large teams. Respected @ashwinivaishnaw please release details of location & login details of ALL MPs with CDRs. Please release info on training given to staff to login,” she had said in a post on X.

In his affidavit, Hiranandani also claimed Moitra made frequent demands of him and kept asking him for various favours, which he said he “had to fulfil in order to remain in close proximity with her and get her support”.

“The demands that were made and favours that were asked included, gifting her expensive luxury items, providing support on renovation of her officially allotted bungalow in Delhi, travel expenses, holidays, etc, apart from providing secretarial and logistical help for her travels within India and to different parts of the world. I could ill-afford to displease her,” he stated in the affidavit.