In a major relief to Jharsuguda Congress MLA Naba Kishore Das, House Ethics Committee has given him a clean chit over the allegation of his watching porn in the State Assembly during a session in 2015.
The House Ethics Committee has turned down the allegation due to lack of evidence.
As per the committee’s report, it had asked for the media footage from a private news channel that had captured visual of Das watching a ‘porn’ video on his smartphone.
The Junior Engineer, who was in charge of the CCTV in the Assembly, had produced the CCTV footage before the committee showing no such act by the MLA. However, the concerned media channel failed to submit the visual.
Based on the written statements of the Assembly official and the media channel editor, the ethics committee gave a clean chit to Das.
The first meeting of the 24-member panel headed by BJD legislator Ranendra Pratap Swain was held in February 2016 to probe into the serious allegation against Das. The panel had reviewed a Karnataka Assembly committee report on the legislators watching porn clips in the House.
The case relating to Das was reminiscent of what happened in the Karnataka Assembly in 2012 when two BJP Ministers were allegedly caught watching porn clips on a mobile phone.
Defending himself, Das had said that by mistake he had just touched the YouTube app and the clip in question popped up while he was browsing the phone, but the act was not deliberate and intentional.
However, the then Speaker Niranjan Pujari had suspended Das from the House for a week after ruling BJD MLAs demanded his dismissal over the issue and referred the matter to the ethics committee for a probe.