Congress party leader in the Lok Sabha, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury on Tuesday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) MP Nishikant Dubey of making “baseless allegations” against the Congress party in the House and claimed that expunged remarks have “never been restored” before. On Monday, Dubey had raised in Lok Sabha the issue of a news report published in the New York Times which claimed that a web news portal called NewsClick had received Rs 38 crore in foreign funding and that the money had been used by the company to create an anti-India environment. “Between 2005 and 2014, the Chinese government has paid money to Congress…Congress wants to divide India…” the BJP member had alleged, even as an uproar amongst the Opposition ensued. According to an expunged record circulated by the Lok Sabha Secretariat, the names of Rahul Gandhi and others, and a reference to the “Chinese government” had been expunged. However, later, the record uploaded on the Lok Sabha’s website showed that the names had been restored. Following a meeting on Tuesday with Speaker Om Birla on the issue related to Dubey’s remarks not being expunged, the Congress leader said, “Yesterday, BJP MP Nishikant Dubey made baseless allegations against the Congress and our leaders such as Rahul Gandhi.” “He made derogatory remarks against them…” he told reporters at the Parliament complex yesterday. Chowdhury added that the Opposition parties had approached the Chair and the comments had been expunged on Monday. However, when the records were uploaded online, the remarks had been restored, he said and claimed that it was a first, as expunged records are usually not restored. “We met the Speaker and also wrote a letter to him. Our complaint was taken note of and the records were expunged. We thought objectionable remarks had been removed. Surprisingly, in the night we noticed that all the remarks that we protested against were restored in the records. Something like this has never happened before,” he said.
“This is against the rules and traditions of Parliament. This is a threat to Indian democracy. The rules and traditions of Parliament are being broken,” Chowdhury said. Congress whip in Lok Sabha Manickam Tagore had written to Speaker Om Birla on Monday over allegations levelled by Dubey in the House against senior Congress leaders and called for referring the matter to the Committee of Privileges for examination and necessary action.
