'Fixed-match from the beginning': Mahua Moitra on LS panel's recommendation for her expulsion in 'cash-for-query' matter

On Thursday, a Lok Sabha committee recommended TMC leader Mahua Moitra's expulsion from the House for accepting "illegal gratifications" from a businessman to raise questions in Parliament at his behest.

Reacting to this, Moitra called it her “badge of honour” that an ethics committee “unethically” expelled someone. "For me, it's a badge of honour because I feel I am going to go down in history as the first person who was unethically expelled by an ethics committee whose mandate does not even extend to expulsion. The best they can do is suspension. It is the Privileges Committee that can recommend an expulsion,” Mahua Moitra told India Today TV.

The Lok Sabha Ethics Committee, chaired by BJP MP Vinod Kumar Sonkar, met in New Delhi and adopted its 479-page report on the 'cash-for-query' allegations against her after six of the 10 members present voted in support and four opposition MPs recorded their disapproval.

“This was a fixed-match from the beginning,” she said.

Moitra said that there was no discussion on the draft report and the ethics panel chairperson directly put it to vote.

The ethics panel report will now be tabled in the Lok Sabha which will then vote on a motion to put the recommendation into action.

Trouble for Moitra began when BJP MP Nishikant Dubey forwarded a complaint against the Trinamool Congress member by lawyer Jai Anant Dehadrai to the Lok Sabha Speaker, accusing her of taking bribes for asking questions in the House at the behest of businessman Darshan Hiranandani to target the Adani Group and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Moitra has denied the charge of receiving any pecuniary benefit.

The Ethics Committee held its first meeting on the matter on October 26 when Dehadrai and Dubey submitted their evidence against Moitra. The Trinamool leader was the next to depose before the committee on November 2, which ended in high-drama with opposition members storming out of the meeting claiming indecent posers by the chairman to Moitra.

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