Adhir Chowdhury plans privilege motion

Angry at being evicted from an official bungalow, senior Congress MP from West Bedngal Adhir Chowdhury has sought the Lok Sabha Speaker’s permission to move a privilege motion against the authorities concerned.

“You would be moved to know that .... A former Union Minister and fourth-term MP living in total darkness on a winter night along with his seven-year-old daughter”, Mr Chowdhury said in a letter to Speaker Sumitra Mahajan seeking permission to move the motion in the Budget Session.

Mr Chowdhury alleged that the authorities snapped the electrical connection to his bungalow without informing him even when he was there. “Even Ajmal Kasab (the terrorist hanged for the Mumbai attack of 26/11) enjoyed water and power but not an MP,” he said and claimed that the new accommodation given to him was “not in habitable condition”.

Mr Chowdhury, the West Bengal PCC chief, told reporters here that he has been given such treatment because he has raised his voice against the BJP inside and outside Parliament. “I have been subjected to harassment and humiliation” and attempts were made to “defame me publicly during the eviction”, he told the Speaker, insisting that he was the “victim”.

Enclosing copies of his correspondence with the authorities, he said, “You will surely find that the onus of not shifting to another accommodation does not lie on me and I am not at fault.”

Attacking parliamentary affairs minister M. Venkaiah Naidu, who is also urban development minister, he wondered how Mr Naidu had stayed in a huge official bungalow for 10 years when the BJP was in Opposition and he was not entitled to it. Mr Chowdhury had on Wednesday sought two or three days to shift to the new, smaller accommodation allotted to him on Humayun Road here after the Delhi high court refused to stay his eviction from his ministerial bungalow at New Moti Bagh here.