Cash-for-query row: Mahua Moitra to appear before Parliamentary Ethics Committee today; top points

Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Mahua Moitra will appear before the Ethics Committee of Lok Sabha today, November 2, in connection with the "cash-for-query" allegations against her.

On Wednesday, Moitra took to X (formerly Twitter) and shared a copy of the letter written by her to the panel ahead of her appearance. In the letter, Moitra mentioned her wish to "cross-examine" Supreme Court lawyer Jai Anant Dehadrai, who accused the MP of taking bribes for asking questions in Parliament.

Moitra also expressed her desire to cross-examine alleged "bribe-giver", Darshan Hiranandani, who submitted an affidavit to the committee without offering substantial "documentary evidence".

Cash-for-query allegations against Mahua Moitra: Top 10 points

1. Ahead of her appearance, sources close to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) told India Today TV that Moitra's Parliament account was accessed 47 times from Dubai. Sources also revealed that Mahua Moitra undertook 14 unaccounted overseas trips during her tenure as a Member of Parliament.

2. Earlier, the Lok Sabha Ethics Committee had asked her to appear on October 31. She had requested a hearing date after November 5 to accommodate her existing commitments but was denied an extension beyond November 2.

3. On the basis of Dehadrai's allegations, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Nishikant Dubey wrote to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and then to the ethics panel, asserting that the TMC MP raised questions through her parliamentary account as per the instructions of businessman Darshan Hiranandani.

4. Moitra has been accused of asking questions, which were keyed in through her parliamentary account, at the behest of businessman Darshan Hiranandani in return for bribes and favours from the Dubai-based scion of the well-known business family.

5. What has added to Moitra's woes is an affidavit by the businessman in which he admitted to giving bribes to her so that she could ask questions to target the Adani Group and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Moitra has claimed that Hiranandani was coerced by the government to file the affidavit.

6. Mahua Moitra, meanwhile, said that the only things she had received from Darshan Hiranandani, the CEO of the Hiranandani Group, as gifts were "one scarf, one lipstick and one eye shadow".

"The only things I have received from Darshan as a close personal friend was one scarf for my birthday present three or four years ago, then he called from the Dubai airport asking if I wanted something," Mahua Moitra told India Today in her first interview since the cash-for-query row began.

7. She also said that she had given her Parliament login ID and password to businessman and her friend Darshan Hiranandani to have someone in the latter's office to type in the questions to be asked in the Lok Sabha.

8. In conversation with India Today, Moitra said, "Someone in Darshan Hiranandani's office typed the question which I gave on the Parliament website. After putting the question, they would call me to inform and I would read all the questions in one go as I am always busy in my constituency."

"After putting the question, an OTP (one-time password) comes on my mobile phone. I would give that OTP and only then is the question submitted. So, the idea that Darshan would log in to my ID and put in questions of his own is ludicrous," she added.

9. Moitra, in her letter to the panel, raised concerns about what she claimed were "double standards" of the Ethics Committee in issuing a summons. She said the panel has adopted a very different approach in the case of BJP MP Ramesh Bidhuri who has a "very serious complaint of hate speech" pending against him with the Privileges and Ethics branch.

Bidhuri was summoned on October 10 to provide oral evidence but he expressed his inability to depose as he was away campaigning in Rajasthan, she said.

10. TMC minister Firhad Hakim earlier suggested that the accusations against Moitra could be aimed at silencing her due to her outspoken criticism of the BJP government on multiple fronts.

Also Read: Cash-for-query row: Mahua Moitra's Parliamentary account was accessed 47 times from Dubai, says report