New Delhi: The bribery charges against Trinamool Congress members will be probed by the Lok Sabha's Committee on Ethics, Speaker Sumitra Mahajan announced on Wednesday, asserting that "very serious" allegations impacted the "very credibility of Parliament".
Speaker Mahajan made the announcement soon after the Question Hour, a day after BJP, Congress and CPI(M) came together in Parliament to attack the TMC members allegedly shown accepting bribe in a sting and demanded an inquiry.
"Certain acts of alleged unethical conduct on the part of some members of the House have been reported in the press and the matter was also raised by some members in the House yesterday.”
"These allegations are very serious in nature and seek to impact upon the very credibility of parliamentarians and Parliament as an institution and therefore need to be examined," Mahajan observed as she asked the L K Advani-headed 15-member committee for "examination, investigation and report".
Read: BJP, Congress, Left unite to corner Trinamul Congress over 'bribe sting'
The Speaker's decision is reminiscent of a similar probe by a parliamentary committee in the Lok Sabha and the Ethics Committee probe in the Rajya Sabha in 2005 in the wake of the 'cash-for-query' scam, which had led to the termination of membership of 11 MPs -- 10 members from Lok Sabha and one from Rajya Sabha. Somnath Chatterjee was the then Speaker.
In the purported sting telecast a few days back, five TMC members from Lok Sabha -- Saugata Roy, Sultan Ahmad, Suvendu Adhikari, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar and Prasoon Banerjee, and Mukul Roy from the Rajya Sabha, were allegedly shown accepting money from fictitious officials of a firm.
Members, including those from the TMC, heard in pin-drop silence as Mahajan made the announcement.
"Keeping in view the extreme gravity of the matter, I have in exercise of my powers under the provisions of Rule 233B of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the Lok Sabha decided to refer the matter to the Committee on Ethics for examination, investigate and report," she said.
However, Saugata Roy later strongly protested the decision, saying it was "unilateral and one-sided".
If it becomes a practice, then anybody will do a sting against members and inquiry would be ordered on such "unverified" contents, he contended.
Read: CPI(M) seeks Parliamentary probe into alleged TMC bribery video
The sting relates to April 2014, he argued and suggested that it dates prior to the constitution of this Lok Sabha. The Speaker, however, brushed aside his objections, saying such a probe by a parliamentary committee had been ordered earlier too, an apparent reference to 'cash-for-query' scam.
The TMC member also said he had full respect for Advani and added that the veteran BJP member will be fair.
A news portal’s ‘sting’ operation alleged that three West Bengal ministers, some MPs and MLAs had allegedly accepted bribes from a fictitious import-export company. The news portal, Narada News, released the tape of the operation, which it claimed to have conducted over the last two years.
The tape purportedly shows the ministers and legislators taking cash, said to be around Rs 5 lakhs each, in return for favours such as lobbying for a fictitious company “Impex Consultancy”. A journalist from the portal claimed to be a representative of the company to seek help from them.
The TMC was quick to dismiss the tapes as “doctored” and said the “dirty tricks departments” of its political rivals were behind the “smear campaign”. However, the BJP demanded the resignation of Mamata Banerjee and the CPI(M) sought President’s Rule in the state in the wake of the news portal’s “sting” operation.
Read: Election Commission to examine TMC ‘bribe sting’ video
The video, which triggered a major political storm in poll-bound West Bengal, could not have surfaced at a worse time for the ruling TMC. BJP national secretary Siddharth Nath Singh showed the 24-minute-long video at the party office in Kolkata only hours before the arrival of the full bench of the Election Commission in the city.
The video showed Trinamool Congress vice-president Mukul Roy, MPs Saugata Roy, Sultan Ahmed, Suvendu Adhikari, Prasun Banerjee and Kakali Ghosh Dastidar, state ministers Firhad Hakim and Subrata Mukherjee, MLA Iqbal Ahmed, Kolkata mayor Sovan Chatterjee, former state transport minister and Saradha scam accused Madan Mitra, former Burdwan SP H.M.S. Mirza and other TMC leaders accepting wads of currency notes from a fake consulting firm to allow it to set up a company in West Bengal.
Singh claimed that the TMC-led West Bengal government had broken all records in corruption. The video showed the TMC leaders and the police officer accepting bribes of around Rs 73 lakhs from the fake consultancy firm. Around Rs 4 lakhs to Rs 5 lakhs was used in each transaction, with the exception of Roy, who was offered Rs 20 lakhs. However, Roy could not be seen taking any money.
Government had on Tuesday made a pitch for an inquiry, saying either the Speaker can order it or the government can go for it.
The House had seen BJP, Congress and Left making a common cause to target the Trinamool Congress on the issue, even as Mamata Banerjee's party claimed that the charges were a political conspiracy ahead of the West Bengal assembly polls.
