Mamata Banerjee held aloft party nominee Mahua Moitra’s hand at a rally here on Sunday and urged people to re-elect her to register their protest against her expulsion from Parliament over the “gifts-for-query” controversy.

“You voted for Mahua (in 2019)…. Still, she was thrown out of Parliament. You have to elect her again so she can give a fitting reply to them (the BJP),” the chief minister said at the Sukanta Sporting Club ground in Dhubulia on Krishnanagar’s outskirts, about 100km from Calcutta.

Mamata alleged that Moitra had been maligned and then expelled because she had been vocal against the BJP.

She asked the crowd whether they would vote for Moitra from Krishnanagar, a seat with a sizeable minority vote that the BJP is desperate to wrest from Trinamul. She seemed satisfied with the response.

The rally was Mamata’s first major political programme since suffering injuries to her head and nose on March 14. She has several rallies and road shows lined up in north Bengal till April 17, when campaigning for the first phase of the polls (April 19) will end.

Mamata’s choice of Krishnanagar, which votes on May 13, to launch her party’s campaign was preceded by “a lot of thinking”, a Trinamul source said.

“Her fight is against Prime Minister Narendra Modi… and there is little doubt that Mahua had established herself as one of the staunchest anti-Modi voices in Parliament, by asking him tough questions,” the source said.

“So, Didi has used this rally to establish the credibility of her anti-Modi fight. The optics is important for the sake of Didi’s stature as a politician with an all-India appeal.”

The nub of Mamata’s speech was the Centre’s use of its investigative agencies against Opposition parties in the run-up to the polls.

“You are saying that you will win 400 seats…. Then why are the ED, CBI, NIA and the IT (income-tax) department targeting Opposition leaders?” she asked.

The chief minister also expressed displeasure at the pre-poll transfers of state-cadre officials by the Election Commission of India.

She mocked the BJP’s “400-plus” target, reminding the party of its performance in the Bengal polls of 2021.

“The BJP is saying ‘400 paar’; I challenge them to cross 200 seats first…. In the 2021 Bengal Assembly polls, they had aimed for 200-plus seats but had to stop at 77. Some of these 77 have since joined us.”

In her 45-minute address, Mamata cited several examples of “ED-CBI-NIA raj”, highlighting how the agencies have been sending summonses to her party’s poll managers ahead of the elections. She said she had asked them not to respond to these notices and to carry on with their election work.

She then broached the subject of the arrest of Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal in connection with alleged corruption in his government’s now-scrapped liquor policy.

“They have kept Arvind behind bars, but could they stop his work?” Mamata said, alluding to how Kejriwal was continuing to function as chief minister from jail.

However, Mamata was silent on the “Save Democracy” rally held at Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan on Sunday to protest Kejriwal’s arrest.

Trinamul did send Rajya Sabha members Derek O’Brien and Sagarika Ghose to the Delhi rally, attended by most INDIA constituents. But the absence of Mamata and her nephew and Trinamul No. 2 Abhishek Banerjee provoked comment in political circles.

Mamata did not explain her absence from the Delhi event. Instead, she castigated the Bengal units of two major INDIA constituents — the CPM and the Congress — and equated them with the BJP here.

“I started INDIA. I gave the name…. A vote to the CPM or the Congress means a vote to the BJP,” Mamata said, portraying the Bengal contest as a BJP-versus-Trinamul duel.

“They are saying the INDIA bloc is fighting, but there is no alliance here in Bengal. It’s only a conspiracy. We shall fight the BJP alone in Bengal and defeat them,” she said.

She, however, clarified that she would “consider” the post-results situation.

The Congress’s leader in the Lok Sabha, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, jeered at Mamata over her absence from the Delhi rally and questioned her credibility in the fight against the BJP. He accused her of a secret entente with Modi.

CPM central committee member Sujan Chakraborty virtually echoed Adhir, saying Mamata did not go to the rally because she did not want to displease the BJP.

Mamata has been steadfast about going it alone since seat-sharing parleys with the Congress fell through because of the party’s “unrealistic demand” of six to nine seats in Bengal when Trinamul was ready to offer just two.

Some Trinamul poll strategists believe the breakdown of seat talks could be good for their party, with a part of the anti-Trinamul votes going to the CPM-Congress combine instead of the BJP.

Moitra had defeated the BJP’s Kalyan Chaubey by more than 63,000 votes from Krishnanagar in 2019. The gap between the parties widened in the 2021 Assembly polls, with Trinamul polling 1.16 lakh votes more than the BJP across the seven Assembly segments.

“The BJP will try its best to defeat Mahua.... Prime Minister Modi held a rally here even before the poll schedule was announced, and he will come again,” a Trinamul block vice-president said. “The BJP will try to polarise the voters along religious lines.”

The Trinamul establishment in Nadia is relieved that the BJP has fielded Amrita Roy, member of the Krishnanagar “royal” family.

“She is apolitical and has hardly any traction at the ground level,” a district Trinamul leader said.

However, a Trinamul insider sounded a word of caution. “Don’t forget, the election is still 43 days away and a lot might change once the Prime Minister starts campaigning,” he said.

“A lobby in the district Trinamul is essentially anti-Mahua, and one can’t predict what they will do. The BJP’s attack on Mahua has turned Krishnanagar into a prestige battle for us. It’s good that Didi launched the campaign from here.”

From projecting Moitra as a victim of the BJP’s misogynistic politics to promising more development for the region, Mamata did everything possible to put her candidate ahead in the race.

As the constituency has a sizeable Matua population, Mamata spoke at length on the BJP’s carrot of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) for the lower-caste Hindu sect that has largely immigrated from Bangladesh.

“A few days ago, they brought in the CAA…. Some of our Matua brothers thought that they had finally got their right. But please understand that the CAA is the head,while the NRC (National Register of Citizens) is the tail,” she said.

“The moment you apply under provisions of CAA, you will become a foreigner and illegal immigrant and will be stripped of all the benefits you enjoy now.”

She added: “When they come to you and urge you to apply under CAA provisions, tell those contesting the elections to themselves apply first.”

She reiterated her promise that she would not allow the CAA or the NRC to be implemented in Bengal.