The Ethics Committee has recommended expelling the Trinamool MP—who is accused of trading parliamentary questions for cash. We look at the bizarre case that involves a vengeful ex, an adored dog and login credentials—and what’s next for Moitra.
Researched by: Nirmal Bhansali & Anannya Parekh
A former JP Morgan VP, she joined Trinamool in 2010—after a brief stint in Congress. Moitra won her first Lok Sabha election in 2019—defeating the BJP candidate Kalyan Chaubey—a well-known football player.
Claim to fame: Moitra first made waves in Delhi for this impassioned speech—warning that India was headed down the path of fascism:
She has since emerged as one of the fiercest critics of the BJP’s Hindutva ideology—calling it a “superficial and xenophobic narrative” of “false nationalism.”
Lok Sabha firestarter: Moitra has participated in 36 parliamentary debates in over four years—and has a high attendance of 85%. She seems to “thrive in the pressure cooker of politics”—taking on the press, Hindutva ideologues and most recently, Gautam Adani.
Point to note: Moitra’s relationship with her own party has had its ups and downs. The party leadership—including Mamata Banerjee—don’t always appreciate her outspoken personality. Example: The time she praised Durga as a “meat eating” and alcohol loving goddess. In fact, the party did not publicly extend its support to Moitra until yesterday.
The jilted ex: The entire saga starts with a CBI complaint filed by Jai Anant Dehadrai—Moitra’s former partner. They broke up earlier this year—and have been engaged in a bitter custody battle over their dog—a rottweiler named Henry. Things have been ugly for a while. Moitra filed two complaints with Barakhamba police station in March and September this year against Dehadrai—accusing him of trespassing and theft of “personal possessions”—including her dog.
The timeline: The case against Moitra seemingly came out of thin air—and then gathered pace very quickly:
Over the course of these events, allegations against Moitra are laid out in the media—though some of the details remain murky.
Allegation #1: She took bribes—in kind and cash—from Darshan Hirandani in exchange for asking questions about Gautam Adani and PM Modi in Parliament. Dubey claims there is “irrefutable evidence”—but it isn’t clear what it entails other than Hirandani’s affidavit and Dehadrai’s complaint:
Fifty of the 60 questions asked by the Trinamool MP in the Lok Sabha so far either protect or further the interests of businessman Darshan Hiranandani and his company, Mr. Dubey has alleged. “The questions were also often focused on the Adani Group, another business conglomerate, Hiranandani Group was bidding for business against,” the MP mentioned in his complaint to the Speaker.
We don’t know what specific business interest Moitra promoted by asking these questions. Dubey also claims that Moitra linked Modi to Adani—“giving the impression that she was critical of the government, possibly with the intention of seeking cover against her clandestine criminal operation.”
Point to note: Open Magazine offers more details—but they are unsourced—and included in a story that seems to already consider Moitra to be guilty:
Darshan Hiranandani’s questions on Gautam Adani and his businesses, posed through Mahua Moitra… were aimed at getting precise details about sectors in which he himself was operating, including data, ports, and real estate.
It also contains this fascinating little detail:
Since the Narendra Modi government took office in 2014, though, things have changed noticeably. Over the last nine years, bureaucrats and ministers working on the responses—before the date with questions earmarked for a specified ministry—have been instructed to research on the possibility of underhand interests at play. If there are questions from MPs from the treasury benches identified as ‘loaded’ one way or another, an unofficial investigation is launched in order to nullify the scope of any MP indulging in suspected lobbying.
Allegation #2: She broke parliamentary regulations by sharing the login credentials for her online Parliament account. The rule cited by Dubey prohibits the sharing of passwords—and holds the user responsible “for any data/e-mail that is transmitted using the government of India e-mail system.”
We’re not sure exactly what happened in this case. But let’s start with how MPs ask questions.
Question Hour: During each parliamentary session, both houses allot time to allow MPs to ask questions of the government. The ministries are sorted into five groups. Each group is allotted its own day—and on that day, you can only ask questions pertinent to their portfolios. An MP can choose to put an asterisk next to their question. Starred questions have to be answered by the minister in person—but it can submit responses in writing for unstarred questions. Question Hour in both Houses is held on almost all days of each session.
Selecting the question: Here’s where the allegations become a little puzzling. MPs have to submit questions via their online account. But each MP can only file five questions per day—the limit is seven in the upper house. More importantly, the questions are selected at random:
Separate lists of starred and unstarred questions are fed into a computerised ballot. Based on this, 20 starred and 230 unstarred questions are listed for answers in the Lok Sabha, whereas 15 starred and 175 unstarred questions are listed in the Rajya Sabha. Individual MPs exercise no control in this process and have no means to ensure that the questions they file are actually balloted.
So Moitra could file questions—but there was no guarantee that she would get to ask them.
Also important: Not every MP gets an equal chance of asking their questions during a session:
There is no system of rotation that can ensure that all MPs have an opportunity to get their question listed. This can lead to a situation where a whole session goes by with an MP not getting a starred question balloted.
Moreover, questions are often rejected by the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha Secretariats—who also modify the questions whenever they wish.
Loaded questions? Dubey claims 50 of 61 questions asked by Moitra were targeted at Adani. But a NewsLaundry investigation of Moitra’s questions shows that she has asked 62 questions on matters that concern 28 ministries. Of these, only nine were related to the Adani Group—six directed at the petroleum ministry—and the others at finance, civil aviation, and coal ministries.
Point to note: NewsLaundry also looked at each of the nine questions—and concluded: “It’s not clear if any of these could give undue advantage to any corporate firm.”
Show me the money! In 2005, a Cobrapost sting exposed 11 MPs who agreed to ask specific questions for cash. All of them were expelled from Parliament. So there is precedent for cash-for-query corruption cases. But there was a clear money trail in the 2005 case. There is none in the evidence presented against Moitra—or at least none that has been shared… as yet.
About sharing those passwords: MPs routinely share their credentials with assistants, researchers and others. The reason: they rarely write their own questions—and many are not used to the online system which is relatively recent:
For instance, quite a few MPs are technically challenged. In actual operating procedures, personal assistants, researchers and other people associated with MPs use their login credentials to undertake Parliamentary work on their behalf.
Moitra has not denied sharing her password with Hiranandani—who she says was a friend helping her craft questions. A former Lok Sabha functionary says none of this is illegal:
[A]n MP is free to engage any person to do his parliamentary work. He also does not have any obligation to disclose the sources from where he gets information to do his parliamentary work. Article 105 of the Constitution gives them the freedom to say “anything” in the House. This right should be deemed to be extended to the tapping of any source for information for putting questions up or framing Bills or resolutions to be placed in Parliament. Therefore, an investigation into the sources of information of an MP may not have a legal sanction.
What’s next: Yesterday, the Ethics Committee adopted the recommendation to expel Moitra—unsurprising since the BJP-led NDA holds the majority. FYI: this is a first in its history. The committee will forward the recommendation to the Speaker Om Birla—who may table it in front of the Lok Sabha. It will then be discussed in the upcoming winter session—which begins on December 4.
If that happens, the process may look like this:
Before putting the question to the House, the rules say the Speaker may permit a debate on the motion not exceeding half an hour. After the motion is agreed to, the chairperson or any member of the committee, or any other member, “may move that the House agrees or disagrees, or agrees with amendments, with the recommendations contained in the report.”
If a majority vote in favour of the recommendation, Moitra will be expelled. Reminder: the BJP enjoys a comfortable majority in the Lok Sabha.
Moitra’s options: If she is expelled, Moitra can challenge the decision—but only on very serious grounds. Only if there is “some illegality or unconstitutionality about the way in which the committee went about the whole exercise, if there was a total denial of natural justice.”
Point to note: The Ethics Committee does not investigate criminal charges—or determine guilt. The CBI will have to decide whether to investigate Moitra for accepting bribes—which is a criminal offence.
The bottomline: It’s astonishing how brutal a “brute majority” in Parliament can be.
Indian Express has a 2019 profile on Moitra—while this Outlook piece looks at her first headline-making speech. The Hindu has the best explainer of the legal issues—as does this Indian Express column—but it is paywalled. The Hindu also has more on how the Ethics Committee works. Open Magazine offers a deep dive into the history of parliamentary questions—and ethical issues related to it. Just FYI: it also seems to have a distinct bias against Moitra/Congress—and toward the BJP. The Quint is very good on what needs to be established to make a criminal case against Moitra. Indian Express revisits the 2005 case. PRS Legislative Research has more on how Question Hours work. NewsLaundry has two good pieces—one on the Moitra-Dehadrai relationship and the other on Moitra’s questions in Parliament.
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