Lok Sabha panel to hold first meet on bribery charges against Mahua Moitra today

The Lok Sabha Ethics Committee will hold its first meeting on Thursday on the cash-for-query allegations against Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Mahua Moitra.

Supreme Court lawyer Jai Anant Dehadrai is scheduled to appear before the panel at 12 pm and record his statement on the matter. After Dehadrai, BJP MP Nishikant Dubey, who levelled the bribery allegations against Moitra, is slated to appear before the committee at 12:30 pm.

In his complaint to Speaker Om Birla, Dubey cited documents shared by Dehadrai. Birla has referred the matter to the committee headed by BJP MP Vinod Kumar Sonkar.

Dubey said the advocate, once close to Moitra before having a fallout, had shared “irrefutable evidence of bribes exchanged” between her and businessman Darshan Hiranandani to target the Adani Group and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In his letter to Birla, Dubey claimed 50 of 61 questions she asked in the Lok Sabha till recently were focused on the Adani Group, the business conglomerate which the Moitra has often accused of malpractices, more so, after it was at the receiving end of a critical report by short-seller Hindenburg Research.

The row intensified with the firebrand TMC leader blaming a “Fake Degree MP”, in a dig at Dubey, and her “jilted ex”, in a reference to Dehadrai, for the controversy.

Hiranandani, the CEO of the real estate-to-energy eponymous group, recently claimed in a letter that Moitra targeted Gautam Adani to “malign and embarrass PM Modi whose impeccable reputation gave the opposition no opportunity to attack him”.

Moitra, however, raised questions over the credibility of Hiranandani’s letter, alleging that it was “drafted by the PMO” and he was forced to sign it after being “threatened” with a “total shutdown” of his family’s businesses.