• -TMC chief breaks her long silence on the cash-for-query case involving her party MP

Kolkata, EW News : West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has broken her long silence on the cash-for-query case involving her party MP Mahua Moitra. Moitra has been accused of seeking bribes to target the Adani Group in Parliament at the behest of Darshan Hiranandani. Banerjee expressed support for Moitra and said the Trinamool MP's planned expulsion will end up helping her in the elections. Mamta Banerjee also accused the BJP of attempting to saffronise the country's cricket team. She claimed that India would have won the World Cup if the finals had taken place in Kolkata or Wankhede.

At an event in Kolkata, as she attacked the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the use of central investigative agencies to target rival leaders, “Mahua Moitra's expulsion from Lok Sabha is being planned… but this will help her before (the 2024 general) election,” Banerjee said on Thursday.

“Central agencies targetting opposition leaders at present will go after BJP, following the 2024 election,” she said, “This government at the centre is there only for three more months.”
Prior to this significant message of support, Banerjee had refused to discuss the furore surrounding Mahua Moitra, who is accused of taking bribes from businessman Darshan Hiranandani to ask questions targeting the Narendra Modi government in Parliament.
Before that, Trinamool Rajya Sabha MP Derek O’Brien simply said the party would take an appropriate decision after the ethics panel inquiry concludes.

That inquiry finished earlier this month – following a stormy hearing in which Moitra accused the committee of asking “filthy” questions while recording her statement. In its report, now before Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, the ethics committee recommended Moitra be expelled from Parliament when it holds the Winter Session next month. The committee said it found her actions “highly objectionable, unethical, heinous and criminal”.

Moitra has dismissed the allegations against her, terming them as “false, baseless and not supported by even a shred of evidence”. The allegations have been levelled against her by BJP Nishikant Dubey, citing Supreme Court lawyer Jai Anant Dehadrai’s letter, which claimed the TMC MP took bribes from businessman Darshan Hiranandani to ask questions in Parliament.