Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra on Friday alleged that the chairperson of the Ethics Committee asked which hotels she had stayed in and with whom, during her deposition in connection with the cash-for-query case, reported PTI.
The case pertains to complaints by Bharatiya Janata Party MP Nishikant Dubey and Supreme Court advocate Jai Anant Dehadrai alleging that Moitra took bribes from businessperson Darshan Hiranandani to ask questions against the Adani Group in Parliament.
The ethics committee launched its investigation into the matter in October. Moitra appeared before the panel on Thursday but stormed out of the meeting along with Opposition members of the panel. She accused committee chairperson and BJP MP Vinod Sonkar of asking her personal and unethical questions.
“The chairperson insisted on asking the most cheap sordid questions about my personal life including ‘Who do you talk to at night’, ‘How many times’, ‘Can you give me the call details’,” Moitra said on Friday.
The Opposition MP also alleged that Sonkar was reading from a script given him to by the BJP leadership.
“The chairman asked me, ‘You call so and so a dear friend. How dear is he?’ Mentioning his wife’s name, he said, ‘And does his wife know?’ He said, ‘You can answer yes or no’,” Moitra told The Hindu.
Moitra also said that there were no specific rules prohibiting MPs from sharing the login and password and that parliamentary assistants regularly log in to the system on behalf of legislators, reported The Hindu.
However, Sonkar denied the allegations and said that Moitra disrupted the deposition to avoid investigation, reported the Hindustan Times. “Only those questions were asked to Mahua Moitra on which there are allegations,” he told reporters on Friday. “She was given the right to give answers to those questions she wanted and not give those she did not wish.”
Sonkar also accused Moitra of using unparliamentary language against the panel.
“The kind of words she used for the chairman and members of the ethics committee do not suit an MP or a woman,” he said. “She wanted to avoid giving answers and create obstacles in the investigation.”
Meanwhile, Aparajita Sarangi, a BJP MP and a member of the panel, accused Moitra of trying to create a “fake narrative” and “playing the victim card”, reported The Hindu.
Sarangi said that the chairperson of the panel asked Moitra a few questions pertaining to the affidavit submitted by Darshan Hiranandani. “Mahua Moitra spoke for more than one hour and she talked about her personal life in which I don’t think anybody was interested,” she told The Hindu.
The legislator alleged that Moitra lost her cool after she was asked about some content in the affidavit.
Sarangi also accused Moitra of using “all kinds of filthy language” against Sonkar and other members of the committee.
“She was very arrogant in her demeanour,” the BJP MP said. “She was very rude and she has been trying to create a fake narrative and misleading the people of the country by playing a victim card.”
Soon after Thursday’s proceedings, Moitra had written to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla saying that the committee should find another name for itself as it has “no ethics and morality left”.
She had also alleged that Sonkar picked the “most sordid line of questioning” as he read from a “script” asking her “detailed and personal questions” questions. “He continued even after being warned multiple times by other members of the committee to refrain from this filthy line of questioning,” she claimed.
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