Tuesday’s defection spectacle intensified jitters in the Trinamul Congress over who might go next, as BJP leader Mukul Roy kept his former party guessing and claimed that moles had been planted to break Trinamul from within.

Roy, the former No. 2 in Trinamul, said at the New Delhi programme where the converts were paraded: “It was, all along, our plan to keep people in Trinamul for as long as necessary, to make them work for the BJP from within. Now the time has come to bring some of them out, step by step,” he said.

“There is no rush to reveal all the names at one go and expose them,” Roy added

Among the elected representatives who crossed over to the BJP on Tuesday were three MLAs — Roy’s son Subhranshu (Trinamul, Bijpur), Tushar Kanti Bhattacharya (Congress, Bishnupur) and Debendra Nath Roy (CPM, Hemtabad). Bhattacharya had defected to Trinamul months after being elected in 2016, but remained a Congress MLA on paper.

In the just-concluded general election, the BJP secured leads in 121 Assembly segments in Bengal, 27 short of the majority mark in the 294-member House.

Trinamul sources said at least eight other MLAs, including four from North 24-Parganas, were looking to switch. At 33, North 24-Parganas has the highest number of Assembly constituencies in the state.

“Mukul knows that if he plays his cards right, he can get 20-plus Trinamul MLAs to defect from North 24-Parganas alone. It is his backyard and he has been working hard to break Trinamul’s back in the crucial district,” said a source.

Trinamul’s North 24-Parganas president and minister Jyotpriya Mullick held an emergency meeting with the district leadership in Madhyamgram on Tuesday afternoon.

A nine-member committee headed by Mullick and including ministers Bratya Bose, Purnendu Basu, Sujit Bose and Tapas Roy, former minister Madan Mitra and government chief whip Nirmal Ghosh was formed to stem the rot. The 60 Trinamul councillors who joined the BJP on Tuesday belonged to four municipalities from the district.

“The leaks must be plugged, first in North 24-Parganas. The district, thanks to the activities of Mukul, Arjun (Singh) and other traitors, has suddenly become a hotbed of defections…. It has 33 Assembly seats and must be protected,” said one of the committee members.

The BJP had not won a single seat in North 24-Parganas in the 2016 state polls. Now, the party has two — Subhranshu and newly elected Bhatpara MLA Pawan Kumar Singh, Arjun’s son.

Arjun, the former Trinamul strongman who won the Lok Sabha elections from Barrackpore, questioned Mullick’s place in the committee.

“Jyotipriya Mullick is in the queue to join our party. Why is he in the committee to stop defections? This is hilarious,” Singh said.

Mullick asserted his loyalty to Mamata Banerjee. “My actions will speak for me,” he said in response to Arjun’s claim.