Cash-for-query scam: Police files sanction against MP

The Delhi Police has submitted to a court here the Lok Sabha speaker's sanction for prosecution of former BSP MP Raja Ram Pal in the infamous cash-for-query scam which had rocked Parliament in 2005.

The Delhi Police has submitted to a court here the Lok Sabha speaker's sanction for prosecution of former BSP MP Raja Ram Pal in the infamous cash-for-query scam which had rocked Parliament in 2005.

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Pal is now a Lok Sabha MP from the Congress party. The Anti-Corruption Branch of the Delhi Police filed the sanction before the court of Special Judge B R Kedia.

Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar had granted sanction to try Pal, a Congress MP from Uttar Pradesh, in 2010 and the court had directed the police to file the original copy of the sanction letter before it.

A private news channel, in a sting, named Operation Duryodhan, had caught Pal and ten other MPs on camera, purportedly taking money for posing queries on the floor of Parliament.

Pal was one of the 11 MPs who were found guilty by a lawmakers' panel of accepting money to ask questions. In 2005, the Parliament's Ethics Committee, which was asked to look into the matter, held 11 MPs guilty.

The MPs were expelled from the Lok Sabha by then speaker Somnath Chatterjee. Pal, who was a BSP MP in the previous Lok Sabha, was among those expelled.

He, however, won the 2009 general elections from Akbarpur in UP as a Congress candidate.