New Delhi: Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee Thursday made her support of beleaguered party member Mahua Moitra clear. Moitra faces possible expulsion from the Lok Sabha in a cash-for-query case.
At a party event Thursday, the West Bengal chief minister said Moitra’s expulsion was being planned, but this would only help her before the general elections in 2024.
“She will now speak outside what she spoke within Parliament,” the Trinamool chief told party cadres, referring to Moitra’s stringent criticism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alleged close ties to billionaire Gautam Adani.
Banerjee had so far not spoken on the case against Moitra, which started following BJP MP Nishikant Dubey’s 15 October accusation against Moitra, of allegedly taking bribes from a business tycoon to ask questions in Parliament targeting the Adani Group.
In the weeks since, the matter was referred to the Lok Sabha ethics panel, which after interviewing her, recommended her expulsion from the House to Speaker Om Birla.
Moitra, in response, dismissed the decision as a “prefixed match by a kangaroo court” and deemed it the “death of parliamentary democracy”.
For nearly a month before that, Moitra fought the charges, and even walked out of the ethics panel probe meeting, while the party took a “wait-and-watch” approach.
However, soon after the ethics panel adopted the expulsion report by a majority, Mamata signaled her support for Moitra by giving her an important organisational post. Moitra was made district president of Nadia (Krishnanagar) – she is the MP from Krishnanagar) – in a wider organisational reshuffle in the middle of November.
Moitra had served in that post previously too, but had been removed after a 13-month stint.