The Supreme Court will hear a petition filed by Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Mahua Moitra, challenging her expulsion from the Lok Sabha on March 11, 2024.
A bench comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta will hear the petition, wherein the court had previously declined to provide interim relief to Moitra, who had requested permission to participate in the Lok Sabha proceedings until her plea is finally adjudicated.
On January 3, the apex court had sought the response of the Lok Sabha secretariat while noting that one of the issues at hand pertains to the jurisdiction of courts and the power of judicial review in the matter.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the Lok Sabha secretary general, had urged the court not to delve into the internal disciplinary matters of another sovereign organ of the State. He had contended that Parliament can internally address disciplinary matters concerning its members through its in-house procedures, which are not subject to judicial review, thus rendering Moitra’s plea non-maintainable.
Senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi, appearing for Moitra, had argued that contrary to circulating theories, the TMC leader was expelled from the Lok Sabha for sharing her parliamentary login credentials. Singhvi had stated that Moitra was expelled under a rule pertaining to hacking.
On December 8 20203, following a heated debate in the Lok Sabha over a panel report, during which Moitra was denied the opportunity to speak, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi moved a motion to expel the TMC MP from the House for “unethical conduct”.
The motion was adopted by a voice vote. The ethics committee of the Lok Sabha found Moitra guilty of “unethical conduct” and contempt of the House for sharing her Lok Sabha members’ portal credentials user ID and password with unauthorized individuals, which purportedly had an irremediable impact on national security, as asserted by Joshi.
The committee had further recommended that due to Moitra’s “highly-objectionable, unethical, heinous, and criminal conduct,” a comprehensive legal and institutional inquiry be initiated by the government within a specified timeframe.
The motion initiated by Joshi stated that Moitra’s “conduct has additionally been found to be unbecoming as an MP for accepting gifts and illegal gratification from a businessman (Darshan Hiranandani) to further his interest, which is a serious misdemeanor and highly-deplorable conduct” on her part. Previously, the chairman of the ethics committee, Vinod Kumar Sonkar, had presented the initial panel report on a complaint filed by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Nishikant Dubey against Moitra.
In October 2023, Dubey, based on a complaint filed by Supreme Court lawyer Jai Anant Dehadrai, alleged that Moitra had posed questions in the Lok Sabha in exchange for cash and gifts from Hiranandani to launch an attack on industrialist Gautam Adani and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In an affidavit submitted to the ethics committee on October 19 of the past year, Hiranandani asserted that Moitra had shared her login ID and password for the Lok Sabha members’ website with him. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has lodged a preliminary FIR in the matter.