Mahua Moitra panel: Congress pays price for dragging its feet on defiant Preneet Kaur

Given that Preneet’s vote ensured that the Lok Sabha panel wasn’t tied over expulsion of Moitra, it is an embarrassment for the Congress at a time when it is leading the Opposition unity efforts for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The TMC is part of the INDIA bloc. All four other Opposition MPs in the Ethics Committee voted against the motion.

On Friday, an agitated Partap Singh Bajwa, the Congress’s Leader of the Opposition in the Punjab Vidhan Sabha, sought Preneet’s expulsion over the “unethical act”.

“The name of the committee is Ethics Committee. Before we get to Moitra, Preneet has herself done the most unethical thing by not voting as per the directions of her party. One can imagine how much faith people will repose in a committee whose members are themselves unethical. Preneet is getting all her salary, pension, Rs 5 crore MPLAD funds, as a Congress MP. I request the Ethics Committee Chairman to first expel her (Preneet). Her vote should not be counted,” Bajwa, the Congress MLA from Qadian and a former MP, told The Indian Express.

Preneet remained unavailable for comment.

Amarinder, a BJP National Executive member now, joined the party months after the Congress removed him as Punjab CM in September 2021.

In the 2022 Punjab Assembly polls, Preneet campaigned for Amarinder, who contested as an ally of the BJP.

The couple’s daughter, Jai Inder Kaur, is also in the BJP and is currently the Punjab BJP Mahila Morcha president. Incidentally, Jai Inder is angling for a BJP ticket from the Patiala Lok Sabha constituency in the 2024 elections.

In February this year, the Congress had suspended Preneet after the party’s Punjab unit chief, Amrinder Singh Raja Warring, in a letter to AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge, accused her of “indulging in anti-party activities to help the BJP”.

While announcing her suspension and issuing a show-cause notice, Tariq Anwar, member-secretary of the party’s disciplinary action committee, had asked Preneet to explain within three days why she should not be expelled from the party.

A belligerent Preneet had hit back in her reply, stating, “Congressmen in Punjab who have made allegations against me, are those who have many issues pending against them. If you call my husband, who was then the chief minister, he will give you details about their doings. He protected them because they were from his own party. However, I suppose you will not do that.”

Asserting that she would keep on working for her constituents, the Patiala MP had noted, “As per your show-cause notice, I have always stood by my constituents, my constituency and my state, Punjab, and have taken up their issues regardless of which government is in power.”

In her reply to the show-cause notice, she had said, “As to action against me, you are free to take whatever you wish.”

Earlier in November 2021, the Congress had issued her a show-cause notice, seeking an explanation for her alleged anti-party activities. Preneet had then claimed that she did not receive any such notice.

Preneet is a four-time Patiala Lok Sabha MP, having won in 1999, 2004 and 2009. While she lost the seat in 2014, she won it back in 2019.

From May 2009 to May 2014, in the UPA II government, she served as Minister of State for External Affairs.