New Delhi: Her maiden speech in the Lok Sabha has made her a national, even international celebrity, with the video being circulated in the millions. Mahua Moitra, 43, created waves outside Parliament when she said all that the entire Opposition put together has been hesitant to articulate, and did so with visible courage and determination that had her repeatedly asking the Lok Sabha Speaker to control the other side. And to allow her to speak uninterrupted.
There was little Moitra did not say, shushing even the BJP MPs into silence, and extracting several extra minutes from the Speaker for her ‘maiden’ speech. The BJP was linked with fascism with her words received in silence, an indication of what a forceful presentation can achieve.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnh-mpg_oF4
But who is this charming lady? She was seen on television channels earlier as a Youth Congress leader, and is now in the spotlights as an MP of the Trinamool Congress who shattered the ceiling with her first speech in the Lok Sabha.
Moitra is a corporate honcho who was vice-president of JP Morgan before returning to India in 2008 to join politics. She worked with Rahul Gandhi for a while, had a great rapport with him and was placed in charge of the Youth Congress in West Bengal, but eventually realised that the party was not really going anywhere and resigned.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, with her penchant for bringing in young people, got her into the party in 2010, and six years later she was given an Assembly ticket from Kolkata and won. She was elevated to general secretary of the TMC and its spokesperson, honours that the Congress has always been very hesitant about conferring on its younger members.
But Mamata Banerjee had no such reservations, and Moitra was fielded for the Lok Sabha elections this year and emerged a winner, a first time MP from the Krishnanagar parliamentary constituency in West Bengal.
Her rise within the party was evident when the TMC fielded her along with the more seasoned MP Derek O’Brien to speak on the motion of thanks to the President for his address to Parliament.
Confident, assured, she spoke with the attitude of a pro as she raised her hand to silence the opposition benches when they became noisy, directly told the treasury benches to keep their counsel to themselves, and urged the Speaker repeatedly to maintain order in the House. She did not lose her cool but spoke with rare passion, using forceful and hard hitting arguments laced with poetry.
Moitra has had heated encounters with opinionated television anchors. And in 2017 as an MLA she filed a defamation case against playback singer Babul Supriyo, a BJP Minister in the central government, objecting to his televised remarks where he referred to her as ‘Mahua drunk on Mahua’ (this being a Bengali word also for local hooch). This was on January 4, 2011. He filed a counter case a week later saying she had made false allegations against him on a chit-fund scam.
Moitra clearly enjoys the confidence of Mamata Banerjee, and has found her feet in the party that’s currently standing up for the rights she is so passionate about. Banerjee has approved six national spokespersons with Moitra being the only woman among them – the others are Derek O’Brien, Sudip Bandyopadhyay (the TMC Parliamentary Party Leader in the Lok Sabha) and MPs Saugata Roy, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar and Dinesh Trivedi.
The Lok Sabha intervention thus was not a one-off, tutored speech but a reflection of who Moitra is, and what she believes in. An MP to watch out for.
The Citizen Bureau