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Journalism of Courage
The meeting of the Lok Sabha’s Ethics Committee witnessed stormy scenes Thursday after TMC MP Mahua Moitra, who had appeared before the panel to give oral evidence in connection with the cash-for-query allegations levelled against her by BJP MP Nishikant Dubey, walked out with Opposition members, accusing chairman Vinod Kumar Sonkar of putting “undignified questions” to her.
Hours later, Moitra alleged that what transpired at the meeting was an “orchestrated cheer-haran (disrobing) designed to humiliate” her.
“I walked in as one of 78 woman MPs in a country of 1.4 billion people, ready to assist a Parliamentary committee on ethics on the discovery of truth based on facts and evidence to back it up. Instead, I was subjected to a vastraharan, a disrobing, a witch-hunt of the worst kind. There were sordid, indecent and personal comments such as who I speak to, how many times late at night, and if I can give my call details, why a certain friend X is dear to me, what does his wife feel about it, which hotel I stayed in the last five years and with whom, etc,” Moitra told The Indian Express.
“Despite being repeatedly warned by the committee members to stick to propriety and the relevant line of questioning, he (the chairman) insisted on a written text which was obviously supplied to him by an interested party. The questions were so cheap, so intrusive. so violative of the right of privacy guaranteed by the Constitution and to my dignity as a woman that I would have been doing my role as a woman MP a great disservice if I had sat there for one minute longer and subjected to this orchestrated cheer-haran designed to humiliate me,” she said.
Moitra also released a letter she wrote to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, alleging that she was subjected to the “proverbial vastraharan” (disrobing) by Sonkar in the presence of all members of the committee. She said the chairman “insisted on following the most sordid line of questioning… in which he asked me detailed and extremely personal questions about my life.”
“Instead of asking questions pertinent to the subject, the Chairman exhibited a preconceived bias by maliciously and clearly in a defamatory way questioning me, so much so that 5 of the 11 members present walked out and boycotted the proceedings in protest at his shameful conduct,” she said.
Sonkar told The Indian Express the questions that he asked were related to allegations against her.
“The objective of this committee is to investigate the charges of unethical behaviour levelled against the MP. But she persistently tried to avoid answering the questions. She did not cooperate. Then she got angry and walked out, accusing the chairman and the committee of using unparliamentary language,” he said.
Sonkar said “all questions were regarding the charges made against her by (businessman Darshan) Hiranandani and the allegations made against her by the complainant.”
Before the uproar, a report which claimed that nearly 47 log-ins to Moitra’s parliamentary account were made from Dubai were also shown to the members. Congress member N Uttam Kumar Reddy claimed that Dubey had tweeted about the report on Wednesday and asked how he had access to the report.
Finally, Opposition members walked out of the meeting along with Moitra. Those who walked out were Congress’s Uttam Kumar Reddy and V Vaithilingam, BSP’s Danish Ali, CPM’s P R Natarajan and JD(U)’s Giridhari Yadav.
“We found the Ethics Committee chairperson’s questions to Moitra undignified and unethical,” Reddy told reporters after the walkout.
“The line of questioning appeared to be prejudiced and biased against her. Despite all of us raising objections, the questions were like who did she travel with, who did she stay with etc. We found it was not appropriate and was objectionable. So we walked out,” he said.
BSP’s Danish Ali said they “could not tolerate the way the panel chairman was questioning Moitra in an indecent and inappropriate way”.
“Only the chairman was asking questions and the questions were indecent and inappropriate. We did not want to be part of that meeting in which a woman MP was put through that. She may have been standing in the witness box, but she is a woman Member of Parliament,” Ali told The Indian Express.
The cash-for-query allegations involving Moitra surfaced earlier this month after Dubey wrote two letters – one to Speaker Om Birla, claiming there were 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.
The Ethics Committee has already examined Dubey and lawyer Jai Anant Dehadrai regarding the complaint against Moitra. In an interview to The Indian Express last week, Moitra had admitted that she gave her Parliament login and password details to Hiranandani but denied taking any cash from him, as alleged by Dehadrai in his complaint to the CBI.
On Thursday, Dubey told reporters that Moitra tried to create a wrong narrative about the proceedings. “No power can save Moitra after all evidence provided by me and others against her,” he said.
He said Dehadrai and he “went there (before the ethics panel) as witnesses and Mahua Moitra went as an accused. However, she gave interviews and quoted what happened inside the Committee of Ethics. She tried to set a wrong narrative in the public. What happened today is the darkest day of Parliamentary history”.
