 "Mahua Moitra")
The Lok Sabha on Friday expelled Trinamool Congress member Mahua Moitra by a voice vote after the House adopted its ethics committee report that held her guilty of unethical conduct.
Moitra, who was not allowed to speak during the debate in the House, later said her expulsion was akin to being hanged by a “kangaroo court”. She accused the government of weaponising the ethics panel to force the Opposition into submission. In Darjeeling, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee termed the expulsion of her party’s MP as a “disgrace” to India’s parliamentary democracy and said the party stood by Moitra.
In the Lok Sabha, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi moved a motion to expel Moitra after a heated debate, which the House adopted. The ethics committee report found Moitra guilty of “unethical conduct” and contempt of the House by sharing her Lok Sabha credentials — user ID and password of Lok Sabha Member’s portal, with unauthorised people, which had an irrepressible impact on national security.
Opposition members asked the chair to allow Moitra to put her views in the House, which Speaker Om Birla turned down, citing past precedence. Birla said that in 2005, the then Speaker Somnath Chatterjee had disallowed 10 Lok Sabha members, who were involved in a ‘cash for questions’ scam, to speak in the House. Joshi said in 2005 the then Leader of the House Pranab Mukherjee had moved a motion to expel 10 members on the same day the report was introduced in the Lok Sabha.
Later, Moitra told reporters that she had been found guilty of breaching a code of ethics that does not exist and that there was no evidence of cash or gift given to her. She said one of the two complainants was her estranged partner with a mala fide intention. She said he masqueraded as a common citizen before the ethics panel.
Banerjee, currently on a tour of North Bengal, said Moitra would return to Parliament with a stronger mandate. “The BJP believes it can act with impunity due to its overwhelming majority. They should bear in mind that a day may come when they are no longer in power,” Banerjee said.
