Justice delayed, they say, is justice denied. Most of us here in India familiar with the English language have heard this adage at one time or the other and it has numerous vernacular versions. But thanks to TMC MP Mahua Moitra, we are now witnessing a twist in this centuries-old saying: Justice delivered at the speed of light can also be justice denied.
Moitra, whatever misdemeanours you may hold her guilty of – cash for query or exposing the country to an unprecedented security threat by sharing her password and login details with someone based in a foreign country – is certainly a victim of this speedily served justice.
Justice, not in court, thankfully. But justice à la Parliament’s Ethics Committee, which resorted to what a Hindi-speaking gentleman described so brilliantly: Chat mangni pat byah!
Look at the timeline.
The curtains on the drama went up on 14 October when Supreme Court lawyer Jai Anand Dehadrai filed an FIR with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), accusing Moitra of accepting bribes from Dubai-based businessman Darshan Hiranandani. Then BJP MP Nishikant Dubey — whose educational degrees Moitra has questioned — filed a complaint with Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla demanding her suspension.
A war of words followed on X. The Speaker sent Dubey’s complaint to the Ethics Committee. Then Hiranandani’s affidavit burst upon the scene – first leaked on social media and then sent to the Ethics Committee. In it, he confessed Moitra gave him her Lok Sabha login credentials so he could file questions that she would later ask in Parliament in lieu of expensive gifts.
Deshadrai and Dubey appeared before the Ethics Committee on 26 October and Moitra on 2 November. However, she stormed out of the meeting because she felt that the Committee’s questions were misogynistic. A week later, the Ethics Committee voted 6:4 to expel Moitra from the 17th Lok Sabha.
Why expel Mahua Moitra?
All this in a breathless 27 days.
But expel Moitra for what? Is there proof she took cash to ask questions in Parliament? Are there bank records that confirm this? Or proof she took cash under the table? A video? Or even a statement by Hiranandani? No. And yet the Ethics Committee says expel Moitra first and then get an agency to probe the money trail…if there is one. Shut the stable doors after the horse has bolted – this saying should then be revised to shut the stable doors before the horse is born.
As for the “over-used national security bogey”, logging into the Lok Sabha portal from a foreign country is not deemed a crime, whether it occurs once or 50 times a month. If, indeed, that is a security threat, the National Informatics Centre (NIC) can deny access to anyone trying to log in from a foreign country or IP address. In any case, the portal cannot be accessed without a mandatory one-time password (OTP). That OTP comes to the MP’s phone. So, all access is always sanctioned by the MP. No OTP, no access. So why is national security at risk?
The Ethics Committee curiously found no need to quiz Hiranandani, the man accused of bribing Moitra with gifts who admitted as much in his affidavit. His company’s initial statement denied all charges of unauthorised and illegal access to the Lok Sabha portal.
Also read: Mahua Moitra is ‘jack-in-the-box’ without a godfather. Her entire life choices are on trial
TMC’s mixed signals
In his affidavit, Hiranandani says using Moitra’s login details to post questions was “an error of judgement”. She could also claim that sharing her password with Hiranandani was a judgemental error. Would the Ethics Committee then give her a clean chit, like it apparently has to the Dubai-based businessman?
Mahua Moitra would surely have felt better if she had got vocal and unequivocal support from her own party. On 26 October, at a press meet, Mamata Banerjee strongly defended West Bengal’s forest and environment minister Jyotipriya Mallick, who was then being raided by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in a ration scam. But not a word on Moitra. Ditto, her press meet on 31 October.
TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee did take a question on Moitra on Thursday and said: “I think Mahua Moitra is competent enough to fight her battle on her own.” Some media reports used only this line to suggest that the party has washed its hand off her. But did it? Moitra insists no, and it becomes clear when you listen to the rest of Banerjee’s comment where he criticises Moitra’s suspension only because she chose to “question the government”. “What I read in the ethics committee draft report is that it was mentioned if you find something against her [Moitra], then an investigation should be done. If you have nothing against her, how could you recommend expulsion? This is the question.”
Also read: Mamata Banerjee’s knee, arrests, Mahua Moitra—everything going wrong for TMC
Speedy justice is justice denied
Moitra, who has made her mark in Parliament, is an asset for the TMC. This was especially evident early this year, with her questions on the Hindenburg report that pointed out the alleged irregular practices of the Adani Group. Several opposition parties, like the Congress in West Bengal and the CPI-M, have condemned the Ethics Committee’s handling of the complaints against Moitra in words stronger than the TMC’s.
Like Moitra, who claims that the whole campaign against her was fixed from the beginning and that the Ethics Committee was merely a kangaroo court, opposition leaders are asking why Moitra’s allegation of Nishikant Dubey’s fraudulent degrees has not been probed. And why her questions against Adani are buried. And finally, why the cash-for-query scam against her has been so vigorously fast-tracked “at the speed of Chandrayaan”.
“The Ethics Committee had held an investigation once before, you will remember in the Narada case. LK Advani had chaired it. It had met once and never again,” said Congress MP and West Bengal state unit chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury at a press meet in his constituency Behrampore on Thursday.
“And this Ethics Committee? It was racing at the speed of Chandrayaan. It just has to expel. It is clear [that the] intention was evil. Tone and tenor are clear. Expulsion is the aim,” he added.
Justice delayed is dreadful. Justice at the speed of Chandrayaan, deathly. The Ethics Committee should slow down and deliver justice to Moitra as per the rule book and the tradition of fair play.
The author is a senior journalist based in Kolkata. She tweets @Monideepa62. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)