Speaker denies attending meet

A meeting of political parties to explore ideas for setting up a review committee to consider the cases of the memberships of the 10 Lok Sabha MPs expelled in the cash-for-query scam created controversy today with denials later that the meeting had taken place at all.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi talked about the meeting and said the committee could be formed only if the petition in the Supreme Court against expulsion of the MPs was withdrawn. He also said BJP leader Vijay Kumar Malhotra had written to Speaker Somnath Chatterjee on the question of restoring the membership of the expelled MPs and the formation of a review committee.

However, the Speaker and the BJP leader denied that such a letter had been written. The Speaker, in fact, refuted Dasmunsi’s claim that he had a meeting with political parties on Friday. Chatterjee clearly said he had nothing to do with the meeting.

Dasmunsi, on his part, chose to be evasive on the question of which political parties were in support of such a move, only saying “several parties of UPA and NDA”. As for the review committee, he said at the moment it was “no more than the desire of some parties”.