Behrampore, Aug. 23: Adhir Chowdhury has stayed put in Murshidabad for a week, barring one occasion, for the first time in 17 years.

Hit by a spate of defections to Trinamul at the civic and rural levels that have left the Congress in disarray in its bastion of decades, the state unit president has turned his focus on his pocket borough in a desperate bid to contain the damage, sources said.

Since August 16, Chowdhury has held nine political programmes in Murshidabad, including road shows, sit-ins, rallies, conferences, workshops and road blockades. At least three more are planned over the next couple of days.

The sources said that since becoming an MP in 1999, Chowdhury had not spent seven days at a stretch in the district. However, in the past week, he has left Murshidabad only once - to attend a rally in Calcutta. He returned in a few hours.

Chowdhury did not find anything unusual in his week-long stay in his home turf.

"There is nothing unusual in this. Murshidabad is my home district. It is the most important district in the state for the party. I do devote my time to Murshidabad whenever I can," the Behrampore MP said.

Sources close to him, however, attributed his renewed focus on Murshidabad to "jitters" at Trinamul's onslaught in the district.

Congress functionaries from panchayats, panchayat samitis, zilla parishads and municipalities have switched over in droves to Trinamul in the past few months. Riding on defections, Trinamul has taken over four of Murshidabad's seven municipalities.

In the Congress-controlled zilla parishad, Trinamul has engineered 10 defections, bringing it within sniffing distance of the magic figure of 35.

"Adhir used to take a keen interest in Murshidabad politics between 1991 (when he joined the Congress from the RSP) and 1999. Since being elected to the Lok Sabha in 1999, he has not shown the same zeal," a senior state Congress leader said.

"He was always so sure of his hegemony in Murshidabad. But the developments over the past year and a half must have finally dawned on him," he added.

Over the past 18 months, Trinamul has taken its gram panchayat tally to 144 from 11 in 2013. The Congress, which had 143 in 2013, has slumped to 70.

A member of the Congress legislature party said Chowdhury's approach was "largely responsible" for the failure to restrict the exodus. The state Congress chief has often been accused of not standing by party colleagues, giving a leg-up to those who later betray him and allowing minor misunderstandings to fester.

"His fire-fighting measures now could be too little, too late," the legislature party leader said.

Subhendu Adhikari, the minister who is Trinamul's observer for Murshidabad and Malda, spoke on similar lines. "Chowdhury has woken up at a time nobody can stop us from taking over his fortress," Adhikari said. "The Congress will be wiped out of Murshidabad by December 31."