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India’s lower house of parliament has expelled Mahua Moitra, one of its most outspoken female opposition MPs who is a trenchant critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the powerful Adani conglomerate.
A majority of members of the Lok Sabha, which is dominated by Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata party, on Friday voted to oust Moitra following an investigation into what she said were trumped-up allegations.
Om Birla, Speaker of the Lok Sabha, agreed with the chamber’s ethics committee that Moitra engaged in “immoral and indecent” conduct and so should not continue as a member of parliament.
The probe into the former investment banker’s conduct has laid bare bitter divides in Indian politics both on gender issues and between the BJP and opposition parties that have attacked Modi over his links to Adani’s founder Gautam Adani.
Mamata Banerjee, the leader of Moitra’s party, the All India Trinamool Congress, called her expulsion a “betrayal” of her constitutional rights.
“They didn’t allow Mahua to take her own stand, to explain her situation,” Banerjee said.
Moitra was ejected over claims she posed parliamentary questions, including about Adani, in exchange for gifts from a Dubai-based Indian businessman, Darshan Hiranandani.
In an interview before her expulsion, Moitra called the allegations “absolute rubbish” aired by her ex-partner Jai Anant Dehadrai because of a “bitter custody battle” the former couple had over their pet rottweiler, Henry.
The ousted MP said she walked out of an ethics hearing in October after being subject to a “filthy, sordid line of questioning”, including questions about who she speaks to at night.
“What’s happening is a very poorly run hatchet job,” Moitra said.
Analysts said the probe highlighted the difficult position of women in India’s male-dominated politics. It also showed how Adani has become one of India’s most divisive political issues since short seller Hindenburg Research in January accused the group of stock manipulation and fraud. Adani has strongly denied the allegations.
Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, Moitra and others seized on the report to question whether Adani or Modi, both of whom hail from the western state of Gujarat, profited from their relationship.
Moitra said in the interview both the BJP and Adani wanted her out of politics.
“It’s the same thing with Rahul Gandhi,” she said, referring to Gandhi’s expulsion from the Lok Sabha in March following a defamation conviction. Gandhi returned to parliament after the conviction was stayed in August.
“We don’t accept women politicians; they are supposed to be modest,” Asim Ali, a political commentator, said of the move to expel Moitra. “Once you go out as an individual with liberal values and independence, you get attacked for being too loud and not knowing your place.”
The ethics probe was triggered in October after Moitra’s ex-partner Dehadrai filed a complaint to India’s Central Bureau of Investigation accusing her of corruption and money laundering and forwarded a copy to parliament. Dehadrai could not be reached for comment.
Hiranandani, the businessman at the centre of the allegations, also filed an affidavit claiming Moitra shared her parliamentary login details so he could post questions “directly on her behalf”, including about the Adani Group.
Moitra said on Friday there were no rules against sharing logins and MPs were “conveyor belts” to get questions from the public raised in parliament.
Hiranandani’s affidavit also claimed Moitra “made frequent demands of me and kept asking me for various favours, which I had to fulfil in order to remain in close proximity with her and get her support”.
Indian media have described the affair as one of “cash for questions”, but Moitra denied taking money from her “old friend”, or receiving anything other than small gifts. Hiranandani declined to comment.
The day after Dehadrai made his complaint against Moitra in October, Adani issued a statement describing it as a “shocking development”. The company declined to comment on her claims it sought to engineer her removal from politics.
Moitra said she would try to return to parliament in elections next year.
“I am 49 years old,” the politician, who compares her expulsion to the disrobing of Draupadi, a female protagonist in the Hindu epic Mahabharata, declared in a speech on Friday that took aim at the BJP. “I will fight you for the next 30 years inside parliament, outside parliament, in the gutter, on the streets,” she said.
Additional reporting by Jyotsna Singh in New Delhi
