After being put on the high pedestal by the ‘Liberal left’ for her rather prosaic maiden speech on ‘Seven Signs of Fascism’ in the Lok Sabha, TMC MP Mahua Moitra has now filed criminal defamation against journalist Sudhir Chaudhary for alleging that her June 25 speech was highly plagiarised.
Acting on the complaint filed by TMC MP, Metropolitan Magistrate Preeti Parewa today placed the matter for July 20. The statement of Mahua Moitra will be recorded on that date.
Representing Moitra, counsel Shadaan Farasat asserted that Moitra’s speech was inspired by a famous Holocaust poster in a United States museum. The poster read 14 signs of early fascism. Moitra borrowed the concept and couched it in the Indian context, her counsel argued. Farasat also contended that even while adopting the idea from the Holocaust poster, Moitra mentioned the source from where her speech was inspired from.
Sudhir Chaudhary, on Zee News, ran a broadcast in which he alleged that Mahua Moitra had plagiarised her “hate-filled speech” given in Parliament. Chaudhary also claimed that the views expressed by Moitra were not of her own but were ‘copy-pasted’ from an article written by Martin Longman in reference to US President Donald Trump.
यही है अमेरिकी वेब्सायट का वो लेख जिसे तृणमूल कांग्रेस की सांसद महुआ मोइत्रा ने चुराकर लोक सभा में अपने भाषण में इस्तेमाल कर लिया।हुबहू बिलकुल वही शब्द लेख से सीधे उठा लिए और बोल दिए।संसद की गरिमा ख़तरे में है। https://t.co/4iP3YieHXA pic.twitter.com/HxaHqqdxKS
— Sudhir Chaudhary (@sudhirchaudhary) July 2, 2019
Earlier, Moitra had tried to browbeat Chaudhary by submitting a breach of privilege motion against Chaudhary claiming that he had falsely reported her maiden address in the lower house of the parliament. However, the Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla did not accept the breach of privilege motion submitted by the Trinamool MP then.
Flustered by the negative response from the Lok Sabha speaker, Mahua Moitra had then resorted to abusing media and journalists claiming that she had not stolen the speech. After parliamentary privilege didn’t yield the intended result, Moitra has now employed legal means to intimidate a journalist from performing his duty freely.
