New Delhi: Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra was expelled from Lok Sabha on Friday in the cash-for-query case, following a majority vote in favor of her expulsion. The motion was put to vote by Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla after the parliamentary ethics committee’s report, which recommended Moitra’s expulsion, was presented and discussed in parliament.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Prahlad Joshi supported the ethics committee’s report, which recognized expelled TMC MP Mahua Moitra’s misconduct in the case.
Elected in 2019, Mahua Moitra represented the Krishnanagar parliamentary constituency in West Bengal.
Moitra, responding to her expulsion, said that the Ethics Panel made the decision without evidence of wrongdoing or cash transactions. She also said that the panel didn’t even summon the businessman implicated, whom she allegedly provided her parliament login to in exchange for favors.
“The recommendation of expulsion is solely based on the ground that I have shared my Lok Sabha portal login. There are no rules whatsoever to govern the sharing of login. As the hearing of ethics committee demostrates, all of us MPs are conveyor belts to get questions from the public, from citizens, and voice that in parliament. What is important is that if this Modi government thought that by shutting me up, they are going to do away with Adani issue, let me tell you this Kangaroo court has only shown to all of India that the haste and the abuse of due process you have used demonstrates how important Mr Adani is to you and to what length you will go to harass a single woman MP into shutting her into submission,” Mahua Moitra said while speaking to reporters outside the parliament.
#WATCH | "The Ethics Committee has no power to expel….This is the beginning of your(BJP) end," says Mahua Moitra after her expulsion as TMC MP. pic.twitter.com/WZsnqiucoE
— ANI (@ANI) December 8, 2023
“The complainant says I accepted cash and consideration from a businessman to ask questions in furtherance of his commercial interest. But the businessman’s suo-motu affidavit says I pressurised him into uploading questions to further my agenda. The two are at polar opposites. The ethics committee, without getting to the root of it, has decided to hang me. It refused to summon the businessman to orally testify and there is no proof of any cash or any gifts anywhere,” she added.