Mamata Banerjee’s faith in her arrested party leader Jyotipriya Mullick remained unfettered at Wednesday’s state cabinet meeting with sources confirming the TMC supremo stating on the sidelines of the meeting that her former food and supplies minister “was framed”.

Mullick absence from the state’s active political circuit, it seemed though, has kept Banerjee in a tad bit of discomfiture even as she instructed her ministers in the meeting sidelines, especially those representing Assemblies from North 24 Parganas district from where the arrested minister hails, to keep a “close watch on the party organization in the district” in the run-up to the crucial general elections, it was reliably learnt.

At the formal meeting, though, not much was spoken about the accused minister and his current portfolio, the forest department, except that the department’s responsibilities would temporarily be shouldered by Birbaha Hansda, the minister of state for forests.

Mullick was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on October 27 in connection with the state’s ration distribution scam case and currently remains in the agency’s custody. He is scheduled to be produced in court next on November 13.

Banerjee’s concern for the North 24 Parganas district, which houses five Lok Sabha seats – Dum Dum, Barasat, Barrackpore, Basirhat and Bongaon – possibly stemmed from the party’s current grassroots organizational status in the central Bengal district of Birbhum which, reportedly, is struggling with the void of another high-profile party leader, Anubrata Mondal, since he as arrested and jailed by the central agency in November last year in connection with the multi-crore cattle smuggling case, observers opined.

Both Mondal and Mullick played crucial roles in consolidation of party grass roots in their respective districts and Banerjee wants to pre-empt ground level disruptions in the absence of her leaders, some observers said.

Banerjee’s special instructions seemed to have been directed at her ministers who won the state polls in 2021 from North 24 Parganas Assembly seats – Partha Bhowmick, Naihati; Chandrima Bhattacharya, Dum Dum Uttar; Bratya Basu, Dum Dum; Sujit Bose, Bidhannagar; Rathin Ghosh, Madhyamgram and Sovandeb Chattopadhyay, Khardah – and are now expected to step into the shoes of the arrested MLA from Habra.

Inevitable comparisons were also raised among observers between the cabinet meetings which took place following the arrests to two different ministers of the Mamata banerjee government, that of Partha Chatterjee in July last year and of Mullick last week. While Banerjee wasted little time in removing Chatterjee from her cabinet, and subsequently suspending him from the party, no such action was anywhere in the horizon this time around.