Cash-for-query case: ​Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury writes to speaker, calls move ‘extreme’

As the ethics committee report recommending the expulsion of All India Trinamool Congress member Mahua Moitra from the Lok Sabha in the alleged “cash-for-query case” is scheduled to be tabled in the Lower House on Monday for adoption, Congress House leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury wrote to Speaker Om Birla on Saturday, opposing the “extreme punishment” being proposed for Moitra and urging the chair to pause the proceedings in this regard.

Chowdhury argued for the Speaker’s initiative for codifying afresh the rules and procedures of the privileges committee and ethics committee by claiming the latter’s ambit lacked clarity on the definition of members’ “code of conduct” and “unethical conduct” and scope for handing out punitive actions.

He also questioned why the businessman friend of Moitra, to whom she had reportedly passed on her official login credentials, was not called by the panel, and argued that exchanging gifts “is a common social practice and it would be extremely difficult to link or attribute accepting gifts to be a money trail for deriving favours”. Th eleader said hat he was writing in his personalcapacity.