Complaint against TMC MP sent to House panel

Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla has referred to the parliamentary privileges committee a complaint from BJP lawmaker Nishikant Dubey alleging Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Mahua Moitra accepted cash and gifts from a member of the Hiranandani family to ask questions, senior officials said on Monday, even as the Hiranandani Group denied the allegations.

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Referring to a complaint by a Delhi-based lawyer on the basis of which Dubey shot off his complaint, the Adani Group, the target of many of Moitra's comments and speeches inside and outside Parliament, jumped into the fray and said it proved that "some groups" were "working overtime to harm our name, goodwill and market standing".

Escalating the issue, Dubey shot off a letter to IT minister Ashwani Vaishnaw and minister of state for IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar to probe if Moitra had given access to her login credentials for the Lok Sabha website to Hiranandani and his real-estate conglomerate, so that they could "utilise it for their own personal gain"

Moitra hit back and tweeted, "All parliamentary work of MPs done by PAs, assistants, interns, large teams. Respected @ashwinivaishnaw please release details of location & login details of ALL MPs with CDRs. Please release info on training given to staff to login."

Referring to the allegations, Chandrashekhar, in a post on X, said he was not privy to the full facts on this, but if it is true then it is a "terrible travesty and misuse of PQs (parliament questions)."

The minister said he learnt from news reports that a parliamentary question was "likely asked by a MP at the behest of a data centre company. If true this is indeed shocking and shameful." And went on to say, "...It is true that this company was actively and aggressively lobbying for data localization. Language used in PQ is very similar (linking need for data localization to data breaches) to that used when the head of this company met me."