TMC MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar accuses Kalyan Banerjee of 'verbal abuse' inside Lok Sabha

NEW DELHI: Trinamool Congress MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar on Thursday accused fellow party MP Kalyan Banerjee of "verbally abusing" her inside Lok Sabha and urged Speaker Om Birla to punish him, saying other women members of the House too have been at the receiving end of his "misogyny".

Her complaint underscored the deep churn within TMC, which has been in organisational disarray since it suffered a dispiriting defeat to BJP in Bengal assembly polls, and comes a day after the four-term Lok Sabha MP quit all her posts in the regional party.



Though Dastidar did not name any other MP, Mahua Moitra has in the past been involved in a bitter war of words with Banerjee and had hit out at "misogynistic" elements within her party in the wake of a political row over the RG Kar Medical College rape-murder case.

Banerjee hit back at Dastidar. "If any incident had actually occurred inside the House, it should have been brought to the Speaker's notice immediately in keeping with parliamentary procedure. Raising such allegations much later naturally raises questions about the intent and timing behind them," he said.

TMC president Mamata Banerjee had replaced Banerjee with Dastidar as the party's chief whip in Lok Sabha last year and then brought him back after the assembly poll result, drawing an angry reaction from her.

Both were once considered close to the Mamata-led old guard in Trinamool before the recent churn.