Will summon Mahua Moitra if needed, says ethics panel; MP raises media 'leak' of affidavit

Shubhadeep Choudhury

New Delhi, October 20

Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Mahua Moitra on Friday alleged that Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) drafted businessman Darshan Hiranandani’s affidavit submitted to the Lok Sabha ethics committee in the cash-for-query matter and said she was ready to appear before the CBI and the parliamentary panel for depositions.

As ethics committee chief BJP’s Vinod Sonkar acknowledged receipt of the affidavit, Moitra asked how could it have been leaked.

In a post on X, Moitra objected to ethics committee chairperson’s interaction with the media and said the panel should first investigate how Hiranandani’s affidavit was “leaked”. “BJP’s agenda is to expel me from the LS to shut me up on Adani,” she said.

The panel will hear complainant BJP MP Nishikant Dubey and lawyer Jai Anant Dehadrai for depositions on October 26 with Sonkar saying it would call Moitra if needed.

Earlier today, Moitra, Krishnanagar MP from West Bengal, posted a three-page statement on X countering “dear friend” Hiranandani’s affidavit. She was silent on Hiranandani’s charge that she gave him her Parliament’s login ID and password so that he could post questions on her behalf.

The National Informatics Centre, which guards government servers, is also learnt to have been involved in this investigation.

Hiranandani, in his affidavit, called Moitra “very ambitious” and said she quickly wanted to make a name for herself, something she could only do by “personally attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi and later industrialist Gautam Adani since the two were contemporaries”.

Moitra today claimed that contents of the affidavit were “a joke” and said it appeared to have been drafted by “some half-wit in the PMO who doubles up as a creative writer in the BJP’s IT cell”.

She asked how Hiranandani, who accompanied the Prime Minister abroad recently as part of his business delegation and “enjoys direct access to every minister and the PMO”, could be “coerced by a first-time opposition MP into giving her gifts and giving into her demands”.

The TMC MP alleged that the PMO had drafted Hiranandani’s affidavit and held a “proverbial gun to Darshan and his father’s (Hiranandani Group co-founder Niranjan Hiranandani) heads and gave them 20 minutes time to sign the letter sent to them”.

“They were told they will be finished, the CBI would raid them and all government businesses would stop and all PSU bank financing would be stopped immediately,” Moitra said.

Cash-for-query row

On October 15, Nishikant Dubey wrote to the LS Speaker for suspension of Mahua Moitra, alleging she took bribe from Hiranandani to ask questions in Parliament. Dubey cited a letter from Jai Dehadrai to back his charges. Moitra called Dehadrai a “jilted ex with an acrimonious personal history with me who wanted to somehow get back at me”. Hiranandani said he submitted the affidavit after learning that his name “figures” in Dehadrai’s complaints to Dubey and CBI Director in the matter.