Two weeks after the Ethics Committee of the Lok Sabha recommended suspension of Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, party chairperson and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on November 23, broke her silence on the issue, saying the BJP’s attempts to expel Ms. Moitra will only make her more popular. Ms. Moitra also quipped that the recommendation of the Ethics Committee will only help her double the margin of victory in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls in 2024.
With her pointed remarks and political derring-do, Ms. Moitra caught the popular imagination from the time she took the plunge into politics in 2009 after leaving a cushy job at JPMorgan Chase in London. Among the youth Congress leaders who were picked by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for the ‘Aam Admi Ka Sipahi’ campaign almost 14 years ago, she is someone who has garnered the most attention from the media.
Hailing from a family of politicians — her grandmother Ila PalChowdhury was an MP from Nabadwip and later Krishnanagar constituency in the State’s Nadia district — the Moitras have had a significant influence in the Krishnanagar region. Besides, they also have significant land holdings and investments in a factory in the region. Born in 1974 in Assam’s Cachar district, she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and Mathematics from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, U.S. After a brief stint with the Congress Party, Ms. Moitra joined the Trinamool Congress. She had a rather slow start with West Bengal’s ruling party, which initially assigned her responsibilities in Murshidabad district. It was in its second term in 2016 that the Trinamool decided to field her from Karimpur, a constituency in Nadia bordering Murshidabad district. She won the Assembly polls by a margin of over 15,000 votes.
