Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra is in a tangle.
The cash-for-query row has left Moitra on the backfoot, at a time when the opposition has been relying on mercurial leaders like her to attack the BJP government at the Centre.
The Trinamool MP has been accused of taking bribes and favours for asking questions in Lok Sabha at the behest of businessman Darshan Hiranandani. The Lok Sabha's Ethics Committee is currently probing the allegations against her.
Meanwhile, in an interview with an English language daily, Moitra admitted that she gave her Parliament login and password details to her friend and businessman Hiranandani but denied taking any cash from him, as alleged by Supreme Court advocate Jai Anant Dehadrai in his complaint to the Central Bureau of Investigation.
She said Dehadrai’s complaint was fake. “You have used a person with a failed personal relationship to file a fake complaint and you have put a gun to a friend of mine’s (Darshan’s) head to back it up. But the two have to match.. It’s a bad hit job,” she told The Indian Express.
“To the best of my knowledge, Darshan Hiranandani has given me one Hermes scarf on my birthday… I asked the Bobbi Brown makeup set, he had got me a Mac eye shadow and bitten peach lipstick,” she said in the interview.
Moitra also denied she got Hiranandani to renovate her house.
But she said that whenever she was in Mumbai or Dubai, Darshan’s car picked her up from the airport and dropped her. “I am telling you the exact truth and if Darshan can prove anything more than that. There is no cash or anything else I have ever taken from him. I thrive upon my integrity,” she said.
She alleged that the analysis of the questions she asked in the affidavit given by Dehadrai, on which BJP MP Nishikant Dubey wrote to the Lok Sabha Speaker seeking an inquiry against her, were “laughable and rubbish”.
She said she had made a mistake in choosing her personal relationship. “Yes. I have to plead guilty…I have terrible taste when it comes to choosing people in my personal circle. I hope to break it soon,” she said.