Mamata Banerjee no longer holds a seat in any assembly and the party she formed is no longer under her control in the Bengal Parliament. After losing her seat in Parliament in last month’s defeat to the BJP, the Trinamool Congress chief is said to be considering a return to Parliament now after nearly two decades through a by-election. She actually tweaked the organization a little to try to stabilize it. But her alleged search for a seat for herself led to an unexpected name emerging on Saturday: Sourav Ganguly.
The former Indian cricket captain, who enjoys cult hero status in Bengal in particular, issued a clarification on Saturday, saying he is not a player at all in the game.
Mamata’s many moves
For Mamata Banerjee, 71, the reshuffle first came amid a widening rebellion, partly centered against her nephew Abhishek Banerjee. He will remain the national general secretary for the time being, the party decided. However, senior leaders Derek O’Brien and Dhola Sen have been appointed joint secretaries “to assist him,” party MP Kalyan Banerjee said after a meeting of the TMC’s National Working Committee at Mamata’s Kalighat residence in Kolkata on Friday.
It rebuilt the unity of the state around its loyalists, while rebalancing Abhishek’s powers. Former minister Chandrima Bhattacharya replaces an “ailing” Subrata Bakshi as state unit chief. The new vice-presidents and secretaries-general of the state come. The wings of youth, women, unions and farmers were also reformed.
But the scale of the revolution is evident in the numbers, with the Assembly Speaker already recognizing a 58-member bloc of the rebel TMC – out of a total of 80 – as the main opposition in the 294-member House of Representatives. Ritabrata Banerjee and Sandiban Saha, both expelled by the TMC at the beginning of the week, were appointed leader and deputy leader of the opposition. We are the real TMC now in the Assembly,” Ritabrata Banerjee said. The rebels say they will retain Mamata as “chief advisor” but do not want to have anything to do with Abhishek.
The party plans to move in court against the decision of the Speaker of Parliament. Loyalists also responded to the rebels openly. Kunal Ghosh, spokesman for the government unit, said: “It has barely been a month; even the election ink on their fingers has not faded… and they are doing it.” “They won because of Mamata Banerjee’s name…but party workers are still with us,” he added. But only eight of the 80 MLAs were present at the Friday evening meeting in Kalighat.
Will you fight for the Lok Sabha seat?
Given the dwindling numbers, Mamata’s standing may now depend on him getting a seat. She lost her assembly contest to the BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari, who is now the CM.
One way for it is to hold by-elections in the Lok Sabha. A prominent Bengali newspaper reported that Baharampur MP Yusuf Pathan, another former cricketer, may be asked to step down on its behalf.
This is where Sourav Ganguly’s name came in. Anandabazar Patrika reported on its front page on June 4 that he had been asked to carry Mamata’s letter to Pathan, urging him to resign; And Pathan refused.
On Saturday, Ganguly issued a signed statement to “all media” in which he sought to refute this story and wider speculation.
“Mrs. Mamata Banerjee never asked me to convey any message from her to Mr. Yusuf Pathan, whether he was stepping down from his parliamentary seat, as alleged or otherwise or at all,” he said.
“I never approached or contacted Mr. Yusuf Pathan regarding any such or other request/letter. As such, the question of Mr. Yusuf Pathan responding in the manner alleged in the article cannot arise,” he added.
He said reports of such a move came “in reckless disregard for the truth.”
Ganguly, who has rejected political offers before, asked the media not to publish such allegations without verifying them. Neither Pathan nor the TMC responded.
Yusuf Pathan, a hard-hitting specialist in his stint as a batsman, won Baharampur in 2024, defeating veteran Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury by a huge margin of 85,000 votes. Originally from Gujarat, he had a Bengal connection during his stint with Kolkata Knight Riders in the Indian Premier League.
Mamata Banerjee last sat in the Lok Sabha in 2011, resigning from her seat a day before she was sworn in as prime minister in May that year, ending decades of Left Front rule in her home state.
She first entered Parliament in 1984 on a Congress ticket and secured seven Lok Sabha victories in total. In between, she left Congress and founded the Transitional Military Council in 1998.
She held ministerial positions under three prime ministers. She started as a Union Minister of State in Narasimha Rao’s Congress government in 1991. Under the BJP’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee, she became Railway Minister as the undisputed leader of the TMC, and later served as Coal Minister. She joined the Congress and became Railway Minister under Manmohan Singh as well, before taking over as Prime Minister.
