Bharatiya Janata Party MP Nishikant Dubey on Thursday sent a privilege notice to Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan against chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance, Veerappa Moily, for publicising submissions made by government departments, PTI reported.
Dubey, who is also a member of the committee, claimed that the Congress leader breached the rules of the governing parliamentary committees by posting details of the proceedings of the committee on Twitter. The BJP leader alleged that Moily was “blatantly politicising” the working of the finance committee for media attention.
Dubey was referring to a tweet by Moily on Wednesday about the committee being briefed by the Ministry of Agriculture on the impact of demonetisation on farmers. “This is the first official acknowledgement by the government about the burden our farmers had to bear because of the ill-conceived idea of note ban,” Moily wrote.
Moily’s tweet came after Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh had denied media reports that claimed that the his ministry has accepted that millions of farmers were adversely affected by demonetisation in 2016.
Dubey said that Moily’s tweets were in violation of rule 275 of the Lok Sabha, which asks that evidence, reports and proceedings be treated as confidential before they are tabled in the House, India Today reported. “Veerappa Moily in the capacity of chairperson of committee on finance became so restive and politically coloured that he was searching all options to not only defame our honourable prime minister and also the government of India,” Dubey wrote in the notice to Mahajan, reported The Indian Express.
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