Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) member Sanjay Singh’s claim in Rajya Sabha about the misuse of central agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate (ED) created a flutter with Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar interjecting that only legally permissible documents should be mentioned else it amounts to serious breach of privilege.
Mr. Singh while speaking during the Zero Hour in Rajya Sabha on Monday said that ED has raided around 3,000 Opposition members in the past eight years and conviction has been achieved only in 23 cases so far, a mere 0.5%.
The treasury benches protested the member’s claims. Following this, Mr. Dhankhar said that members cannot be allowed to give any fact if it is not substantiated and it amounts to serious breach of privilege
“Any statement made here has to be indicated with precision, sanctity and with ownership. The member must focus on actual figures and put the relevant record on the table of the House….this House has to be a platform of putting across everything that concerns the public at large any expression cannot be controlled here, a newspaper report, an opinion given by someone is of absolutely no consequence, only legally admissible documents must be the premise of making an allegation,” Mr. Dhankhar said.
Responding to this, Leader of Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge said that the members who speak here either quote from starred or unstarred questions tabled in the Parliament and the Chairman could be dismissive of the media reports but sometimes they have to cite from newspaper reports too other than the statements made by the prime minister outside the House. “The prime minister has mentioned about 2 crore jobs per year, (to deposit) Rs 15 lakhs (in every person’s account once black money was brought back), you may ask what is the authenticity of it? We believe whatever the PM says is authentic,” Mr. Kharge said.
Mr. Dhankhar said he will have a special meeting with the members on the way forward.
Union Minister Piyush Goyal and the Leader of the House replied that this was a regular practice of scoot and shoot. “There are a number of websites, social media platforms, where people make all sorts of claims which are not backed by facts or RTI...factcheckers come out with fake claims, he made a claim that 3,000 political persons were raided, it unsubstantiated. There is a special directive of the court that action should be taken against members of parliament and legislators, we are doing public service that high standards should be maintained and the country’s law should not give any immunity to politicians,” Mr. Goyal said.
Mr. Singh said that the central agencies do not take any action against fugitives such as Nirav Modi, Vijay Mallya, Lalit Modi but instead raided the house of Delhi’s deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia for 14 hours, kept minister Satyendra Jain in jail. “Why dont you put everyone in jail. Sanjay Raut (Shiv Sena) stayed in jail for 100 days,” Mr. Singh said.
