The 17th Lok Sabha might be readying to pull the trigger on Trinamul MP Mahua Moitra during its last session, but chief minister Mamata Banerjee is keeping her future fortunes afloat.

Mamata appeared to signal she stood behind her feisty and trouble-ridden MP by appointing her district Trinamul president for Krishnagar as part of a larger organisational reshuffle on Monday.

The ethics committee of the Lok Sabha had recommended Moitra’s expulsion on grounds of “unethical conduct” and “contempt of the House” last week.

The party high command made several changes to its district units with next year’s general election in mind. But Moitra’s elevation grabbed all the attention.

The Trinamul top brass — Mamata and her nephew Abhishek Banerjee, the party’s all-India general secretary — had initially maintained a deafening silence after the cash-for-query controversy broke last month.

Last Thursday, however, Abhishek came out in support of Moitra and linked the House panel recommendations to her fight against the Narendra Modi government.

The back-to-back public expressions of support from the party leadership prompted Moitra to express her gratitude on social media on Monday.

“Thank you @MamataOfficial and @AITCofficial for appointing me District President of Krishnanagar (Nadia North). Will always work with the party for the people of Krishnanagar,” she wrote on her X handle.

Sources close to Moitra said the larger organisational role handed to her vindicated her stand that the party leadership was with her. Some others in the party, though, expressed surprise at the decision, flagging her “not so impressive” track record as an organisation person.

Moitra had had a 13-month stint as Nadia unit president before being removed in
2021 — when several districts were split into organisational zones — following complaints against her. In the Trinamul scheme, Krishnanagar or “Nadia North” is now an “organisational district”.

“She may be a good parliamentarian but she has always been unapproachable,” a source in the party’s Nadia unit said, adding that the news of her latest elevation had displeased a large segment of the party.

“Our top leaders are fully aware that she damaged the party organisation during her earlier tenure as president because she promoted factionalism,” the source complained.

“The Krishnagar Lok Sabha constituency is favourable for us because of the demography: three of the Assembly segments (Nakashipara, Palashipara and Chapra) have very high concentrations of minority voters. So, our leaders also know that the electoral outcome in the seat has nothing to do with her so-called charisma.”

The general mood in the Krishnagar district unit was captured in a comment by the outgoing president and Nakashipara MLA, Kallol Khan, who confirmed that several complaints about Moitra’s functioning had in the past been lodged with the leadership.

“But it is a decision of the party. The leadership must have had some good reason to bring her in as president. I have nothing to say,” Khan told The Telegraph.

A party source in Calcutta said the leadership knew about these feelings at the grass-root level in Nadia, but its immediate concern was different.

“She (Moitra) has been leading a fierce protest against the Prime Minister and his cronies and everybody knows that she has become a target because of her relentless tirade,” the source said.

“The party has to send out a signal that it is behind her because the matter involves the wider perception about Trinamul.”

Two of the main Opposition parties in the state -- the Congress and the CPM -- had battered the Trinamul stand that Moitra would fight the allegations on her own, tying it to “a secret setting” between the ruling parties in Bengal and at the Centre.

“It will be difficult for them to make such allegations now,” the source said, adding that Mamata had once again displayed her impeccable sense of timing.

Another source said the organisational role for Moitra may have been planned with the possibility — although remote — in mind that she might be unable to contest the next Lok Sabha polls if the fallout from the cash-for-query charges turns more serious.

Additional reporting by Subhasish Chaudhuri