“BJP Plan”: Mamata Banerjee’s Open Support For Mahua Moitra On The Cash-For-Query Scam
The cash-for-query scam in which the Trinamool MP Mahua Moitra was accused have boiled the India’s national political spectrum in the recent times. And at last, the West Bengal Chief Minister and the All-India Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee broke her silence and supported Mahua Moitra. The CM said that the controversy was a plan by the centre ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to remove the MP of her party from the Lok Sabha.
According to Mamata Banerjee, the allegations would only benefit Mahua Moitra to become more popular before the upcoming elections. She was addressing a gathering at the Netaji Indoor Stadium in Kolkata. “They have planned to chase out Mahua. She will become popular for three months”, said the CM on Thursday. “What she said inside… she will say outside. She will hold press conferences every day. What does she lose?”, Mamata Banerjee added.
The response came after the BJP claims that Mahua Moitra had been abandoned by the party when she met allegations. The BJP also particularly pointed that the silence of the CM was an admission of the party leader’s guilt. Only the party’s National secretary Abhishek Banerjee previously discussed about Mahua Moitra publicly.
Ms Moitra has been a vocal critic of Gautam Adani and his business dealings for a long time, and the charges against her were that she had taken bribes from Adani’s business rivals in exchange for asking questions in Parliament. The complaint was initially filed by the BJP MP Nishikant Dubey, in which he accused the MP and ex-investment banker Mahua Moitra took bribes from businessman Darshan Hiranandani to ask questions during the parliament sessions. The complaint also claims that Mahua Moitra had misused her parliamentary login and id by allowing Darshan Hiranandani to post questions on her behalf.
Following the row, a 500-page report was drafted by the Parliamentary Ethics Committee recommending Ms Moitra’s expulsion from the Lok Sabha. The committee, where a panel was headed by BJP MP Vinod Kumar Sonkar adopted the draft report. The panel was consisted of 15 members where seven members from the ruling BJP, three from the Congress, and one each from BSP, Shiv Sena, YSRCP, CPI(M) and JDU.
The committee recommended Mahua Moitra’s expulsion from the Lok Sabha and advised cancellation of her membership. In the panel, as sources revealed to NDTV, six members voted in favour of the recommendation and four had voted against it. To this, Mahua Moitra replied that the report and action would only help her to double the vote margin in the upcoming 2024 Lok Sabha elections. “I will stand from Krishnanagar & double my margin”, she said then on X.
