Mahua Moitra was punished, Parliament membership cancelled, she said - no evidence against me

Cash For Query Case: Parliament membership of Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra has been canceled in the case of taking money in exchange for asking questions in the Lok Sabha. Now Mahua Moitra has given the first reaction in this regard. On December 8, he responded saying there was no evidence against me. Taking aim at him, he said that Modi government cannot silence me even after doing so much. He said, 'In the Ethics Committee report, the reason behind the recommendation to cancel my Lok Sabha membership was given as sharing of login ID, whereas there is no rule of any kind in this regard.'

What did Mahua Moitra say after being expelled from Lok Sabha?

Mahua Moitra further said that Modi government thinks that by silencing me it can get rid of the issue of Adani Group. Let me tell you that because of what this Kangaroo Court did, the whole country saw how important the issue of Adani Group is. Let us tell you that Parliamentary Affairs Minister Prahlad Joshi presented a proposal in the House to cancel the Parliament membership of Mahua Moitra, which was approved by voice vote. Mahua Moitra further said in this regard that I have created a threat to national security through the login portal. But BJP MP Ramesh Bidhuri said the words Dharmasutak to Danish Ali in the Parliament House itself.

#WATCH | "The Ethics Committee has no power to expel....This is the beginning of your(BJP) end," says Mahua Moitra after her expulsion as TMC MP. pic.twitter.com/WZsnqiucoE

— ANI (@ANI) December 8, 2023

Asking questions with money was expensive

He said that Danish Ali is one of the 26 Muslim MPs. There are 200 million Muslims living in the country, but there are only 26 MPs. Whereas BJP has 303 MPs and not even one of their MPs is Muslim. Let us inform you that BJP MP Nishikant Dubey had alleged that Mahua Moitra had taken money and expensive gifts for asking questions against industrialist Gautam Adani in the Lok Sabha. In this regard, the Ethics Committee headed by BJP MP Vinod Kumar Sonkar had held a meeting on November 9. In this meeting, the recommendation report to expel Mahua Moitra from the Lok Sabha for asking questions in the House for taking money was accepted.

11 MPs were suspended 18 years ago

18 years ago in 2005, a year into the first term of the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government, digital portal Cobrapost conducted a sting operation. In this, under Operation Duryodhana, MPs were implicated, who had allegedly shown willingness to promote a company and ask questions in the House in exchange for money and then those MPs also asked questions in the Parliament.

Six of the MPs implicated in the sting are Chhatrapal Singh Lodha (Orissa), Anna Saheb MK Patil (Erandol, Maharashtra), Chandra Pratap Singh (Sidhi, Madhya Pradesh), Pradeep Gandhi (Rajnandgaon, Chhattisgarh), Suresh Chandel (Hamirpur). , Himachal Pradesh) and G Mahajan (Jalgaon, Maharashtra) were from BJP.

Besides, three MPs Narendra Kumar Kushwaha (Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh), Lal Chandra Kol (Robustganj, Uttar Pradesh) and Raja Ram Pal (Bilhaur, Uttar Pradesh) were from BSP and one each from RJD (Manoj Kumar) and Congress. (Ram Sevak Singh). Of these, Chhatrapap Singh Lodha was a Rajya Sabha MP.

Advani compared suspension to “death penalty”

On the same day of the broadcast of the footage, a parliamentary committee was constituted by the Speaker of the Lok Sabha to investigate the matter. Based on the committee's findings, then Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee moved a resolution on December 23, stating that the conduct of the 10 Lok Sabha MPs was "unethical and unbecoming of members of Parliament." He can be expelled from the membership of Lok Sabha. The proposal was accepted, but the BJP opposed it and then opposition leader LK Advani compared the expulsion to the "death penalty".

On the other hand, the Rajya Sabha later also expelled Lodha after an investigation into the matter by its ethics committee led by MP Karan Singh, which said the decision was taken "to maintain the highest standards of integrity and dignity of the House." " was taken. Subsequently, the MPs filed a petition in the Supreme Court and “questioned the procedure adopted by both Houses of Parliament, alleging that it suffers from gross illegality.” He said the investigation was "unnecessarily rushed", and was "neither fair nor impartial".

The matter of suspension had reached the Supreme Court

In 2007, expulsion was upheld by the Supreme Court, which held in Raja Ram Pal Ram Pal v. Honorable Speaker that the power of expulsion was part of the privileges and immunities of Parliament. But, in another twist in 2009, Delhi Police filed an FIR against two Cobrapost journalists and investigated the role of the middleman in the sting operation.

The journalists approached the High Court seeking quashing of the proceedings against them and alleged that the police were protecting corrupt MPs and instead implicating them. A year later, the Delhi High Court dismissed the charges against him.