Trinamool Congress MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar Thursday wrote to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla seeking permission to lodge a formal complaint against party colleague and lawmaker Kalyan Banerjee, alleging that he had repeatedly verbally abused her inside Parliament.
In her letter to the Speaker, Ghosh Dastidar alleged that Banerjee’s behaviour reflected “misogyny” and claimed that similar conduct had been directed at other women MPs as well.
“I seek your permission to lodge a formal complaint to you for redressal against Lok Sabha member of AITC Kalyan Banerjee, who has repeatedly verbally abused me inside the Lok Sabha. This misogyny has been against many lady members and needs to be punished,” Ghosh Dastidar wrote in the handwritten letter to the Lok Sabha Speaker.
Speaking to the media, Banerjee said, “If I do anything in Lok Sabha which is uncalled for or is against ethics, the Speaker should be informed immediately, and the matter would be decided by the Privilege Committee.”
“Now, after being removed from the Chief Whip post and after I was appointed, she has become annoyed,” he added.
Her letter comes a day after Ghosh Dastidar resigned from all organisational posts in the TMC. Earlier this week, the four-term MP had also stepped down as president of the party’s Barasat organisational district unit.
In her resignation letter to the party, Ghosh Dastidar — once among the party’s most recognisable faces and national president of its women’s wing — stated that there was little meaning in continuing in a position where “obscene behaviour” by an “uneducated and uncivilised” party MP towards a woman lawmaker could not be stopped, and where no support or sympathy was extended by the higher leadership.
After the TMC lost the Bengal Assembly elections, Ghosh Dastidar has been criticising the poll strategist organisation I-PAC. In her letter to the party’s state president, she claimed several complaints had been received regarding the organisation and expressed concern that “opaque and undemocratic influence” was gradually taking control of the party structure, something she believed could damage the party’s ideals and traditions.
While the senior MP resigned from all party posts, she said that she will not quit the TMC and “as an ordinary worker of the Trinamool Congress, I will continue my commitment to stand beside people and work in the interest of Bengal”.