Porn watching slur: Odisha MLA gets clean chit

Bhubaneswar: In a major relief to Congress MLA from Jharsuguda Naba Kishore Das, he was given clean chit in ‘watching porn’ in the House during the assembly session in 2015.

The ethics committee of Odisha Assembly turned down the allegation leveled against the legislator for lack of evidence.

The panel has prepared a 9-page report at a meeting held on Dec 18.

As per the committee report, the panel had asked for the media footage from a private news channel that had captured visual of Naba Das watching obscene video on his smartphone in the House.

The Junior Engineer (JE), who was in charge of the CCTV installed in Assembly, had produced the CCTV footage before the ethics committee on Dec 15 showing no such act by the MLA.

However, the concerned media channel failed to submit the visual showing the MLA watching porn videos on his mobile device in the House.

Based on the written statement 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 on Feb 16 in 2016 to probe into the serious allegation against Das. The panel had reviewed the house committee report of Karnataka Assembly on the legislators watching porn clips in House.

Notably, Das had faced wrath from his fellow MLAs after a private TV channel aired the footage scrolling his smartphone and staring at porn clips during the Question House on Dec 14, 2015, in House. The incident was reminiscent of what happened in the Karnataka Assembly in 2012 when two BJP ministers — Lakshman Savdi and CC Patil — were allegedly caught watching porn clips on a mobile phone.

Defending himself, the Congress legislator said that by mistake he had just touched the YouTube app and clip popped up while he was browsing the phone, but the act was not deliberate and intentional.

However, the then Speaker Niranjan Pujari suspended Das for a week after ruling BJD legislators demanded his dismissal over the issue and referred the matter to the ethics committee of the House for the probe.