Barely hours ahead of the Lok Sabha Ethics Committee’s scheduled meeting to formally announce its verdict on the cash-for-queries imbroglio, Trinamul Congress MP Mahua Moitra perhaps received her biggest shot in the arm with her party’s national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee expressing his tacit support for the embattled parliamentarian.
The committee’s recommendation to “expel” Moitra in its 500-page report was already leaked to one media house on Wednesday evening even before the draft report was placed before all members of the committee scheduled to meet on Thursday afternoon.
After emerging from the Enforcement Directorate office from Salt Lake, Calcutta, where he appeared in response to a summons in connection with the school recruitment scam in Bengal, Banerjee, repeating one of Moitra’s previous formal complaints before the committee chairperson Vinod Kumar Sonkar, said: “A lot of matters are already pending before the parliamentary ethics committee. The hate speech delivered by BJP MP Ramesh Biduri on the floor of Lok Sabha in the new Parliament building where he attempted to undermine the dignity of the House is an example.”
“There are many other BJP MPs against whom privilege motions have been moved but no hearings ever take place. If someone decides to fight against or question the government, question the malpractices of Adani, then they are the ones who are targeted by the Centre and expelled from the House. I feel that the steps taken by the central government are reflections of a witch hunt,” Banerjee continued.
Referring to the portion of the committee chairman’s dissent note which says that the accused MP’s activities must be investigated, one that Banerjee said he was privy to, the leader exclaimed: “My question to the ethics committee is simply this: If you don’t have any concrete evidence of wrongdoing in your hands and if those allegations are subject to investigation, then how could you recommend expulsion?”
Moving a step further in speaking about his colleague in the Lok Sabha, Banerjee, the perceived number two of Trinamul Congress, said while seemingly making a statement on the modus operandi of various arms of the Centre: “I feel that Mahua Moitra is adept in fighting her battle on her own. They are doing the same with me over the last four years by calling me time and again in connection with various cases. Once they failed in finding anything against me in one case, they tagged me to another case and then the third and so on. This is their standard practice.”
Banerjee’s statements assume significance in the wake of party supremo Mamata Banerjee’s conspicuous silence on the murky issue involving one of her most vocal and eloquent parliamentarians. While most party leaders followed suit, choosing to remain silent on the matter and putting the ball in Moitra’s court while stating that the party would much rather wait for the committee’s verdict than take a hurried stand, Moitra had managed to find some support in the likes of Sudip Bandyopadhyay and Firhad Hakim, senior TMC leaders. Interestingly, vocal support and solidarity for Moitra had come from other quarters like the Left and Congress, both of which are arch rivals of the TMC in Bengal, a state Moitra represents, while remaining constituents of the opposition INDIA bloc.
Meanwhile, calling the media leak of the panel report a “very serious breach of Rule 275 (2) contained in the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in Lok Sabha”, Moitra wrote to the speaker of the Lower House, Om Birla, who is likely to take a call on the Trinamul’s MPs fate in the House sooner rather than later based on the ethics panel’s recommendations.
“This is clearly a total breakdown of all due process and rules of the Lok Sabha. Your inaction and lack of response to my previous complaints is also unfortunate,” Moitra wrote.
