Ethics Panel Submits Proposal On Charges Against Mahua To LS Speaker: Report

The chairman of the Lok Sabha’s Ethics Committee, Vinod Kumar Sonkar, has sent the panel’s report on the ‘cash-for-query’ accusation against TMC MP Mahua Moitra to the office of Speaker Om Birla, according to sources, news agency PTI reported. At a hearing on Thursday, the Committee unanimously recommended Moitra’s removal from the House for taking “illegal gratifications” from businessman Darshan Hiranandani to raise concerns in Parliament on his behalf. Moitra should be expelled from the Lok Sabha for “unethical conduct” and “contempt of the House,” according to the committee.

Six of the ten members present at the Committee meeting on Thursday voted in favour of the 479-page report, while four members opposed it.

Birla is now in Kota and is anticipated to return to the national capital after Diwali (Nov 12), after which he is expected to act on the report.

Script Written Somewhere Else: BSP’s Danish Ali 

Danish Ali, a BSP MP, claimed on Friday that BJP leader Nishikant Dubey was aware of the contents of the Lok Sabha ethics panel report on the “cash-for-query” charge levelled against TMC’s Mahua Moitra, and that the details becoming public before the document was tabled in Parliament shows that the “script had been written somewhere else.”

Speaking on the matter, Ali said: “It seems that Nishikant Dubey (the complainant) is the most knowledgeable person in this Lok Sabha. He gets to know about confidential reports and things like how many times log-in was done beforehand and tweets about it too.” He claimed that the report had not yet been presented when its contents were leaked.

“Who is responsible for this? The chairman of the ethics committee is violating rule 275 (of the rules of procedure in the Lok Sabha), while BJP members of the committee are giving television interviews. Nishikant Dubey, who is not even a member of the committee, is tweeting all confidential reports,” Ali claimed.

“I am a member of the committee and cannot say what has been decided by it…. We have given dissent notes and said what we wanted to,” he told PTI.

According to the leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), the verbatim record is incomplete and should be completed.

“Everything is coming out in the open, which shows that the script had been written somewhere else,” he alleged.