FIR against TMC MP, BJP Levels More Charges against Mahua Moitra, Mamata Banerjee

Manas Dasgupta

NEW DELHI, Aug 31: Even as a police complaint was filed in Raipur, the stat capital of Chhattisgarh, on Sunday against the Trinamool Congress Member of Parliament Mahua Moitra for allegedly insulting the union home minister Amit Shah, the BJP heaped more charges on her including “insulting” the Scheduled Caste Matua community and “hurting the religious sentiments of Sanatanis.”

Reacting to a video of TMC MP’s August 28 speech in Karimpur, the West Bengal BJP spokesperson Shatorupa on Sunday said Ms Moitra had crossed all limits. After insulting the Union Home Minister, she has insulted the Sanatanis and Namasudras… Her remarks prove that (TMC supremo) and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee indulges in appeasement politics, which we have been saying time and again.” The Matuas are Namasudras, a Scheduled Caste group which migrated from present-day Bangladesh.

In the video, Moitra is purportedly heard saying: “Throughout the year, you are Trinamool and during the elections, you are Sanatanis? What is this? A Scheduled Caste woman gets Rs 1,200 through Laxmi Bhandar scheme …and in the SC/ST Namasudra booths, when the ballot boxes are opened, it is 85 votes for the BJP and 15 for other parties. Wearing wooden malas, all come to collect government doles, all have Swasthya Sathi cards and take Laxmi Bhandar benefits, but during the election, it’s the BJP.”

BJP’s state legal co-incharge Tarunjyoti Tiwari said: “How can Moitra say that the doles given are by the TMC? It is actually the taxpayers’ money which is given to the common man… How can she say that one has to vote for the TMC because they take benefits of the state government schemes?”

Accusing the TMC MP of hurting the religious sentiments of Hindus by calling the ‘Tulsi Mala” as “wooden malas”, Tiwari said: “This makes it clear that TMC is against the Hindus.”

On Saturday, an FIR was registered against Moitra in Raipur for allegedly making “objectionable” remarks against Mr Amit Shah.

The case was filed on a complaint by Raipur resident Gopal Samanto. Ms Moitra has been booked under BNS sections 196 (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc.) and 197 (imputations prejudicial to national integration), Raipur Superintendent of Police Lal Umed Singh said.

The remarks were allegedly made by the TMC MP in Bengali during an interaction with the media on Thursday. She allegedly accused Shah of shirking his responsibilities on border security and said if infiltrators from Bangladesh were entering into India, it denotes failure of the union home minister as the Border Security Force was the direct responsibility of the union home ministry.

Samanto, the complainant, told reporters that many Bangladeshi refugees have been living in Raipur’s Mana Camp area since 1971, and Moitra’s comments have created fear among them. He alleged that such statements could incite tensions between communities and disturb peace. In West Bengal, BJP leaders have filed police complaints against Moitra in Krishnanagar and Kolkata.

Meanwhile, the internal rumblings in the Trinamool Congress have surfaced again. Kalyan Banerjee, who had resigned as the party’s chief whip in the Lok Sabha earlier this month following a verbal battle with Ms Moitra, has now targeted his party’s Members in the Parliament for not backing him when he was allegedly threatened by a BJP MP two years ago.

His latest allegation featured in his response to a question on an alleged remark made by Ms Moitra against Mr Amit Shah. Though he refused to comment on the matter, he slammed former BJP MP Ramesh Bidhuri’s use of an expletive for Ms Moitra in a now-deleted post. “What Ramesh Bidhuri has said against Mahua Moitra is not acceptable at all. Is it the culture of the BJP to attack a lady MP in this way? Ramesh Bidhuri had made bad remarks earlier too, and that’s why he was threatened by the party, and he didn’t get the ticket in 2024,” Mr Banerjee told reporters on Sunday.

It is then that he raised an incident from 2023, when Ms Moitra came under a scathing BJP attack over cash-for-query charges. The politician alleged he was threatened by BJP MP Rajiv Pratap Rudy when he came out in support of Ms Moitra, but none of his colleagues had then backed him in the Parliament.

“For supporting Mahua Moitra, Rajiv Pratap Rudy held out threats to me, showed his muscle power, and showed his red eyes to me. Unfortunately, our deputy leader, Satabdi Roy, was silent at that time. SP MPs had come to me, but not a single one of our MPs did,” Mr Banerjee told reporters on Sunday. The Trinamool leader said he was now waiting for Mr Rudy’s response, claiming that a new “composition” has emerged following the Constitution Club polls that Mr Rudy won.

Mr Banerjee, who represents the Serampore Lok Sabha constituency in the Lok Sabha, also alleged that not all developments reach the party’s leadership, claiming that there was a “filter.” He did not specify if he referred to a particular MP from his party.

The 68-year-old leader’s remarks had led to infighting earlier as well. He has been at the centre of a massive controversy over his remarks on a rape case in Kolkata, which drew a “misogynist” observation from Ms Moitra. The controversy had soon turned into an ugly spat, raising the temperature within the Trinamool’s Delhi camp.

The matter had escalated to the level that it required the intervention of Trinamool chief and Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who had to urge her party MPs not to fight among themselves and focus on fighting the government on the Special Intensive Revision issue.