Supreme Court will today hear TMC MP Mahua Moitra’s plea against expulsion from Lok Sabha
On December 13, Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud assured Mahua Moitra that he would look into the summary of her plea against her expulsion from Lok Sabha in a cash-for-query case.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court will on Friday hear a plea by Trinamool Congress leader Mahua Moitra challenging her expulsion from the Lok Sabha over cash-for-query charges. Notably, Mahua Moitra, who represented the Krishnanagar Lok Sabha seat in West Bengal, was expelled from the House of Representatives on December 8 after the approval of an ethics committee report accusing her of unethical conduct.
In its report, the Ethics Commission recommended her expulsion in a cash-for-query scandal that alleged Moitra shared her Lok Sabha portal login details with businessman Darshan Hiranandani.
On December 13, Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud assured Mahua Moitra that he would look into the summary of her plea against her expulsion from Lok Sabha in a cash-for-query case.
Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing on behalf of Moitra, mentioned before a bench headed by the CJI Moitra’s plea for urgent listing. CJI assured the senior lawyer that he would look into the mention aspect during the day during lunch. “It may be that the case has not been registered… If an email came, I would immediately look into it. Please send it,” the CJI said.
Earlier, Singhvi mentioned the plea before a bench headed by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, which asked him to mention it before the CJI.
Justice Kaul said: “Let the CJI decide. I cannot decide at this stage.” Judge Kaul will retire on December 25.
Moitra approached the top court challenging her expulsion from the Lok Sabha. Moitra was expelled from the Lok Sabha on Friday after a discussion on the Ethics Commission report in the ‘cash for query’ tabled in the House.
Moitra, who was not allowed to speak during the discussion in the House, said the Ethics Committee broke every rule.
The expelled Lok Sabha MP claimed that she has been found guilty of violating a code of ethics that ‘doesn’t exist’.
Moitra further alleged that the findings are based solely on the written testimonies of two private citizens whose versions contradict each other in material terms and that she was deprived of her right to cross-examine them.
“No one I was allowed to cross-examine. One of the two private citizens is my estranged partner, who posed as an ordinary citizen before the committee with malicious intent. The two testimonies were used to hang me there against each other,” she said.
The Ethics Commission report probing the TMC MP’s ‘unethical conduct’ had recommended that Moitra “could be expelled from the Lok Sabha” and called for an “intense, legal, institutional probe” by the central government in a “time-bound manner”. .
The report was adopted by a 6:4 majority in the panel last month. The report on Moitra’s cash-for-query case revealed that she visited the UAE four times between 2019 and 2023, while her login was used multiple times.