Mahua Moitra accuses Ethics Committee chair of asking inappropriate questions

New Delhi: Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra on Friday alleged that the chairperson of the Ethics Committee asked which hotels she had stayed in and with whom, during her deposition in connection with the cash-for-query case.

The case pertains to complaints by Bharatiya Janata Party MP Nishikant Dubey and Supreme Court advocate Jai Anant Dehadrai alleging that Moitra took bribes from businessperson Darshan

Hiranandani to ask questions against the Adani Group in Parliament.

The ethics committee launched its investigation into the matter in October. Moitra appeared before the panel on Thursday but stormed out of the meeting along with Opposition members of the panel. She accused committee chairperson and BJP MP Vinod Sonkar of asking her personal and unethical questions.

“The chairperson insisted on asking the most cheap sordid questions about my personal life including ‘Who do you talk to at night’, ‘How many times’, ‘Can you give me the call details’,” Moitra said on Friday.

The Opposition MP also alleged that Sonkar was reading from a script given him to by the BJP leadership.

to by the BJP leadership.

“The chairman asked me, ‘You call so and so a dear friend. How dear is he?’ Mentioning his wife’s name, he said, ‘And does his wife know?’ He said, ‘You can answer yes or no’,” Moitra told the media.

Moitra also said that there were no specific rules prohibiting MPs from sharing the login and password and that parliamentary assistants regularly log in to the system on behalf of legislators.

However, Sonkar denied the allegations and said that Moitra disrupted the deposition to avoid investigation.

“Only those questions were asked to Mahua Moitra on which there are allegations,” he tol dmedia on Friday. “She was given the right to give answers to those questions she wanted and not give those she did not wish.”

Sonkar also accused Moitra of using unparliamentary language against the panel.“The kind of words she used for the chairman and members of the ethics committee do not suit an MP or a woman,” he said. “She wanted to avoid giving answers and create obstacles in the investigation.”