Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, June 5: Facing an uphill task of preserving the organisation she built and preventing its further fragmentation, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) founder and the former West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has launched a personal outreach to rebel and wavering legislators
She convened another meeting of the elected legislators at her Kalighat residence in Kolkata individually requesting all the party MLAs to attend the meeting in an effort to halt further defections and hold together a party confronting the first split in its 28-year history.
Hit by an implosion after the BJP ended her 15-year-rule in Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, 71, has over the past two days telephoned several MLAs from Howrah, Murshidabad and North Dinajpur, party sources said. Many of them were seen at meetings of the rebel camp led by expelled legislator Ritabrata Banerjee.
The Ritabrata camp seized control of the TMC’s legislature party on Wednesday after 58 of the party’s 80 MLAs backed his installation as Leader of the Opposition, a claim accepted by assembly speaker Rathindra Bose.
The row was triggered by another meeting at Kalighat where allegations surfaced that signatures of several MLAs were forged on a letter proposing her pick Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay as the Leader of the Opposition. “She is speaking to legislators individually and asking them to attend a meeting at Kalighat on Friday. The effort is to keep communication channels open and explore the possibility of reconciliation,” a senior TMC leader said.
The meeting is widely seen as a test of Banerjee’s continuing hold over legislators who have crossed over, with attendance figures the key indicator.
The bleed she is trying to stem extends well beyond the assembly. More than 100 municipal councillors have resigned from the party, along with leaders including former transport minister Snehasish Chakraborty, who quit on Wednesday.
The outreach is not confined to the assembly either. The TMC has 28 members in the Lok Sabha and 13 in the Rajya Sabha, and the leadership fears the revolt could spread to its parliamentary ranks. At least two trusted MPs — one each from the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha — have been tasked with contacting parliamentary colleagues and dissuading them from joining the “new Trinamool” the rebels say they are building, multiple reports have said.
The anxiety was underlined on Friday by veteran Rajya Sabha MP Sukhendu Sekhar Roy, who told a television channel that a reaction similar to the assembly revolt was “likely in the Lok Sabha too” and warned the party could “disintegrate and cease to exist.” Roy said he remained in the party only formally.
Senior loyalists have rallied behind the TMC chief. Lok Sabha MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay dismissed the rebels, telling that those deserting her had “no political locus standi without her.” MP Sougata Roy said the BJP might attempt an operation in the party’s parliamentary units as it had in the assembly, but added that Banerjee “has fought bigger battles and will bounce back.”
Mamata Banerjee’s task was complicated by the rebels’ own framing of the revolt. The 58 MLAs have maintained that their fight was not against her but against the growing influence of her nephew and former national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee.
A day after the takeover of the legislative party, several rebel legislators insisted she remain the party’s supreme leader rather than be reduced to an adviser. “We want the party to function under her leadership,” rebel MLA Gulshan Mullick told reporters.
The crisis has unfolded a month after the TMC lost power in West Bengal to the BJP, which won 207 of the 294 assembly seats to the TMC’s 80 and formed the state’s first BJP government under CM Suvendu Adhikari, himself a former TMC leader, on May 9. The TMC took 40.8% of the vote to the BJP’s 45.84% — a far narrower gap than the seat tally suggested.
Meanwhile, in an ironical twist, AJUP founder Humayun Kabir, who was expelled from the TMC last year after his call for overthrowing her government, has offered Ms Banerjee a route back to the West Bengal Assembly from Rejinagar, the seat won by him along with Nowda, both in Murshidabad district in the just-concluded Assembly elections.
Mr Kabir said he was prepared to facilitate Ms Banerjee’s return to the Legislature from Rejinagar, which is expected to witness a bypoll once he relinquishes one of the two seats as required under election rules. “If Mamata Banerjee comes to me, I can send her to the Assembly from Rejinagar. If she contests from Nandigram, she will not win. But if she wants, I will resign and ensure her victory from my constituency,” Mr Kabir said. Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari has vacated the Nandigram seat and retained Bhabanipur, from where he defeated Ms Banerjee.
For Mr Kabir, one of Murshidabad’s most influential Muslim leaders, the remarks mark a remarkable political turnaround. Expelled from the TMC last year after a prolonged confrontation with the party leadership, Mr Kabir floated the Aam Janata Unnayan Party (AJUP) and emerged as one of the ruling party’s fiercest critics, repeatedly attacking the Mamata Banerjee Government and calling for its ouster.
“The situation in which she finds herself today pains me. Whatever I am today is because of her,” he said. Even while extending support, Mr Kabir underlined his own influence in the region. “Nobody may listen to her now, but in Rejinagar, Humayun Kabir is the final word,” he said.
Ms Banerjee, however, is also reportedly considering moving to the Lok Sabha through Baharampur constituency asking the former India cricketer Yusuf Pathan to vacate the seat for her. Pathan, who was part of the 2011 World Cup winning squad, won the Baharampur seat in the 2024 parliamentary polls, defeating Congress heavyweight Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury by a margin of around 85,000 votes.
Banerjee has been a member of Lok Sabha in the past and had been a six-time MP from the Calcutta South, which is now known as Kolkata Dakshin. However, she had won her first Lok Sabha elections in 1984 from Jadavpur constituency, defeating CPI(M) heavyweight Somnath Chatterjee. She remained a Lok Sabha member till 2011 before moving to the West Bengal Legislative Assembly after TMC’s victory in the state elections that year.
Banerjee’s likely step to move back to back to the Lok Sabha comes after several reports claimed that a rebellion is brewing in the party in the lower House. Several senior TMC MPs are reportedly upset with party leadership over its functioning and are planning to quit the Trinamool.
Many TMC MPs have also openly expressed their dissatisfaction. This includes veteran MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, who is considered close to Banerjee. Barasat, a four-time MP, has also filed a complaint against TMC’s Kalyan Banerjee to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, accusing him of verbally abusing her inside the House. Other than Dastidar, senior MPs Sukhendu Sekhar Roy and Shantanu Sen have also questioned the party’s way of functioning.