Trinamul Congress’s Moitra today pleaded innocence to the allegations levelled against her and told the parliamentary committee that the charge is motivated by animus of advocate Jai Anant Dehadrai after she broke her personal relations with him, say sources
AMN / WEB DESK
Opposition parties MPs, including Trinamool Congress leader Mahua Moitra and BSP MP Danish Ali, walked out from the Parliament Ethics Committee meeting on Thursday. Mahua Moitra, who was asked to depose before the panel in connection with allegations of cash-for-query, accused the ethics committee of asking “filthy questions”.
“Is this an ethics committee?…reading from a script,” Mahua Moitra said.
Along with TMC MP, BSP MP Danish Ali, JD(U) MP Girdhari Yadav and some other opposition members also walked out from the meeting. TMC MP accused the chairman of the panel Vinod Sonkar of asking her personal and unethical questions.
The committee chairman and BJP MP Vinod Sonkar, who continued the deliberations even after the walkout, later counter-accused the opposition members of behaving unethically and boycotting to detract from allegations against Moitra.
Moitra also snapped at a reporter, saying, “There are no tears in my eyes…making up any rubbish…’tears in your eyes’. Have you seen my eyes? Are there tears in it?”
The Opposition MPs who walked out of the meeting said that the panel asked “unethical questions” to Moitra.
“We found the ethics committee chairperson’s questions to Moitra undignified and unethical,” Congress MP and panel member N Uttam Kumar Reddy was quoted as saying by a news agency.
The House panel is probing BJP MP Nishikant Dubey’s allegations that Moitra accepted bribes and favours for asking questions in Lok Sabha at the behest of businessman Darshan Hiranandani to target the Adani Group and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Moitra has been accused of asking questions, which were keyed in through her parliamentary account, at the behest of Hiranandani in return for bribes and favours from the Dubai-based scion of a well-known business family.
Moitra pleaded innocence to the allegations levelled against her and told the parliamentary committee that the charge is motivated by animus of advocate Jai Anant Dehadrai after she broke her personal relations with him, sources said.