Cause Celebre

CORNERED AND EXPELLED FROM PARLIAMENT SHE MAY BE, BUT THE RELENTLESS CRITIC OF THE MODI REGIME IS BY NO MEANS DONE YET

- Arkamoy Datta Majumdar

She's the first parliamentarian to be expelled from Parliament in almost 20 years, but Mahua Moitra has no plans to skulk silently into the night. On December 8, the day the ethics committee verdict was pronounced in the Lok Sabha in the 'cash-for-query' case, she stood outside the House and gave a fiery five-minute speech, quoting revolutionary Bengali poet Sukanta Bhattacharya and other worthies and vowed to fight the ruling BJP for "the next 30 years". With the members of the opposition INDIA alliance by her side, she raged on, accusing the saffron camp of "the most tenacious witch-hunt of one of the 78 women MPs".