Darshan Hiranandani, the son of realty tycoon Niranjan Hiranandani, on Thursday filed an affidavit in the ‘cash for query’ case involving TMC MP Mahua Moitra. In the three-page affidavit, he made some explosive claims about the firebrand MP and said he used her Lok Sabha login credentials to target the Adani group and gave her expensive gifts.
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The affidavit comes days after BJP MP Nishikant Dubey claimed that Moitra had taken expensive gifts from Hiranandani for asking questions to help his companies. Dubey wrote to the Lok Sabha Speaker, claiming that advocate Jai Anant Dehadrai had “shared irrefutable evidence of bribes exchanged” between Moitra and Darshan Hiranandani. The Speaker forwarded the charges against Moitra to the Ethics Committee of Lok Sabha.
In the affidavit submitted before the Ethics Committee of Parliament, Hiranandani said Moitra had asked questions to target the Adani group and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “She was advised by her friends and advisors that the shortest possible route to fame is by personally attacking Shri Narendra Modi…The only problem was that Sh. Modi enjoyed an impeccable reputation, and was not giving any opportunity to anyone to attack him in policy, governance, or personal conduct. As was her wont, she thought that the only way to attack Sh. Modi is by attacking Sh. Gautam Adani and his group as both were contemporaries, and they belong to the same state of Gujarat,” he wrote.
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The businessman said that she knew that the Indian Oil Corporation preferred to get into a long-term off-take agreement with Dhamra LNG, a joint venture company of the Adani group, and not with his companies. Based on this information, he said, Moitra drafted a few questions that would have elements to embarrass the government by targeting the Adani Group. “She shared with me her email ID as a Member of Parliament, so that I could send her information, and she could raise the questions in the Parliament. I went along with her proposal,” he said.
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Hiranandani, who is a resident of Dubai, said that she was “delighted” at the response she received from the first set of questions that he had sent her relating to the Adani group. “She therefore requested me to keep supporting her in her attacks on the Adani group and provided me her Parliament login and password so that I could post the questions directly on her behalf when required.”
The businessman said that she made frequent demands of him and kept asking him for various favours, which he had to fulfill in order to remain in close proximity to her and get her support for his business in opposition-ruled states. He said the demands that were made and favours that were asked included, “gifting her expensive luxury items, providing support on the renovation of her officially allotted bungalow in Delhi, travel expenses, holidays, etc, apart from providing secretarial and logistical help for her travels within India and to different parts of the world”.
Hiranandani said that many a time he felt that she was taking undue advantage of him and pressurising him to do things he didn’t want to, “but I had no choice”.
Moitra denied all allegations against her and approached the Delhi High Court, seeking to restrain Dubey, Dehadrai, and social media platforms and media houses from posting, circulating, or publishing any alleged fake and defamatory content against her.
