The arrest of party’s Habra MLA and forest minister Jyoti Priya Mallick prompted Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday to constitute a core committee of eight senior MLAs to look into the organisational affairs of Trinamul in North 24-Parganas district.

Mallick used to play a major role in the organisational affairs of the district.

Trinamul leaders said the decision to form the core committee was a significant move in the run-up to the 2024 polls. With Mallick in jail and central agencies ED and CBI carrying out raids on the houses of a number of senior party leaders, including Rathin Ghosh, on alleged charges of corruption, party leaders said that the core committee had to be created.

The eight members of the newly formed core committee, in coordination with four organisational committee presidents, will mobilse party activities in the 33 Assembly segments spanning across North 24-Parganas ahead of the next year’s Lok Sabha poll.

Before constituting the committee, Mamata held talks with four senior leaders — Nirmal Ghosh, Tapas Roy, Partha Bhowmik and Narayan Goswami — from North 24-Parganas in the Assembly on Wednesday. The eight-member committee has Tapas Roy, Sujit Bose, Partha Bhowmik, Rathin Ghosh, Narayan Goswami, Biswajit Das, Haji Nurul Islam and Bina Mondal.

For Trinamul, North 24-Parganas is critical to its success in the Lok Sabha polls. The district has five Lok Sabha seats of which Barrackpore and Bongaon were won by the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. However, Barrackpore MP Arjun Singh, who won as a BJP candidate, later joined Trinamul.

In 2024, Trinamul wants to win both these seats even though the Matua community, which play a decisive role in Bongaon, still largely remains divided with a tilt towards the BJP.

Mamata had also formed a similar core committee in Birbhum district after the arrest of district party chief Anubrata Mandal.

Party insiders claimed “Didi (Mamata)” tried to achieve a “balance of power” by accommodating leaders, who have a larger “acceptability” and no corruption charge so far, in the committee.

At present North 24-Parganas has four organisational committees — Dumdum-Barrackpore, Barasat, Bongaon and Basirhat — to look into party affairs in the district.

“It appears that in North 24-Parganas district the party is apprehending a major political challenge in the run-up to the 2024 polls. The BJP government at the Centre has become desperate to malign our leadership in the district by implicating them in corruption cases. At such a time, a disoriented (Trinamul) organisation could be incapable of giving the desired results in next year’s Lok Sabha elections. Thus a committee to control the organisational affairs in the district was necessary,” the leader added.

Sources said that aware of the challenges, Mamata asked all senior leaders “to work as a united unit” and avoid factionalism in the district.

Ruling out factionalism, Trinamul’s Bagdah MLA Biswajit Das said: “The core committee will try to bridge the gaps in the organisational network for a better political outcome.... We will try to identify organisational weakness across the district and take necessary steps so that the party can fight as a strong united force.”