Mahua Moitra gets new role in Trinamool Congress amid cash-for-query row

Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra was on Monday appointed as the district president of West Bengal’s Krishnanagar (Nadia North) ahead of the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in 2024.

The TMC leader later took to social media platform X to thank party chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for her appointment.

Moitra’s appointment as Krishnanagar’s district president came after the Lok Sabha Ethics Committee recommended her disqualification from the House in view of its probe into the cash-for-query allegations against her.

The TMC leader has refuted the allegations against her, terming them as “defamatory, false, baseless, and not supported by even a shred of evidence”.

The committee, headed by Chairman Vinod Kumar Sonkar, submitted its report on the allegations against Moitra to Speaker Om Birla’s office last Friday.

The report, adopted by a majority in the Committee, accused her of accepting “illegal gratifications” to raise questions in Parliament at the behest of businessman Darshan Hiranandani.

In response to the ethics panel’s decision, Moitra said that the committee did not have the mandate to recommend an expulsion, and added that it was a “fixed match from the beginning”. She said that there was no discussion on the draft report and the ethics panel chairperson directly put it to vote.

Notably, on Monday, the TMC announced a revised list of district presidents for the state’s 35 organisational districts.

Moitra, who was the district president in Krishnanagar a few years ago before being removed in a prior reshuffle, has now been reinstated as the district president of Krishnanagar (Nadia North) organisational district.