Shantanu’s Believe It or Not!* – III

Courtesy IBN comes this astounding story of a murder convict from Nepal, who crossed into India, acquired an assumed identity, flourished in business, amassed a fortune, turned into a politician and was elected, not once, not twice but three times…until the lid finally came off…

The news channel reports:

Moni Kumar, former MP from Tezpur in Assam, is not an Indian citizen, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has told the Supreme Court.

The CBI has told the court that Subba’s nationality documents are forged and a case must be filed against him.

CNN-IBN in May 2007 had found that Subba, 51, was a Nepali citizen named Moni Raj Limbo, who had escaped from prison in that country after being convicted of murder.

…Subba, three-time MP from Assam, had also cited three different places and dates of birth in his election affidavits.

Sh Subba belongs to a party whose leader-in-waiting claims that he is driven by the need to “question the system” but Sh Subba was renominated as a Congress candidate in 2009, despite the swirling controversy around his citizenship.

I am curious to know  what happens next.

Sh Subba – who was the richest candidate in Assam during the Lok Sabha elections with cash, assets and investments worth more than Rs 60 crore – has some explaining to do…

But wait, this is not the end of the story…The best part is:

A public interest  petition filed in Supreme Court to disqualify the MP (because of doubts over his nationality) was rejected by the Honourable Court with this remark:

The courts cannot unseat legislators…

While the controversy around Sh Subba’s citizenship is hardly new, it has been ignored by the powers that be in the past too. Thus while the SC said it could not act in the matter (before), the Chairs of the two houses of Parliament cited procedural hurdles when this matter was raised more than two years back:

Raising the issue in the Lok Sabha, BJP deputy leader Vijay Kumar Malhotra wanted to know how a foreign national could be an MP. Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, however, said he had not given notice to raise the issue.

In the Rajya Sabha, Dinesh Trivedi (Trinamool) said, “a fugitive is alleged to have become an MP. The House has the right to know.”

Deputy Chairman K. Rehman Khan pointed out that Mr. Subba was a member of the other House and so the issue could not be discussed in the Rajya Sabha.

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Mercifully, Sh Subba lost his seat in the recent elections to Sh Toppo of AGP.

Related Posts:

Shantanu’s Believe It or Not!* Part – I and Part II

Also read: A ‘Great’ Congress MP from Nepal!

*Title courtesy: Ripleys.