Senior Trinamool Congress MP Sugata Roy on Monday said he had rejected an offer from the BJP to change his stance, asserting that he would remain in the party on whose symbol he was elected, even as he credited the opposition India Bloc with supporting the TMC at a moment of acute tension.
“Yes, I received an offer (from the BJP) to join it. But I rejected it. I will stay in the party on whose symbol I won the elections,” Roy told news agency ANI.
His remarks came on the day the TMC leadership met India bloc partners in Delhi even as the party faced apparent fissures at home, with a Rajya Sabha MP resigning and a group of Lok Sabha members meeting with West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari of the BJP.
Roy said the party is under constant pressure and support from allies will strengthen it.
“The Transitional Military Council is being targeted and attacked a lot. If other parties support the Transitional Military Council, it will provide strength to the Transitional Military Council,” he said.
He cited the main opposition Congress party’s reaction after the recent mob attack on TMC Secretary General Abhishek Banerjee in Sonarpur as evidence of this support.
“When there was an attack on Abhishek Banerjee, Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi of the Congress condemned it,” Roy said, referring to the Congress president and Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha.
His show of loyalty contrasts with the unrest that engulfed the TMC after its defeat in the assembly elections, in which the BJP won 208 of West Bengal’s 294 seats and ended Mamata Banerjee’s tenure as prime minister, uninterrupted since 2011.
What Saujata Roy said
Saujata Roy, who served his fifth term in the Lok Sabha at the age of 76, was asked why fractures appeared in the TMC. He said the rebellion was being carried out by “those who practice politics but do not have the mental strength.”
He said, “When the situation is bad, they change their position. This is what happened,” referring to the loss of the assembly elections.
Regarding whether the party was likely to lose its name and symbol to a rebel group, he said: “The symbol is given by the Election Commission. This situation has not yet come.”
He said the TMC “will stand up again” when Mamata Banerjee “takes to the street”. Her nephew Abhishek Banerjee was listed among the young parliamentarians who can overcome the crisis.
He said the BJP influenced the defection of MLAs by telling them that they would get more support in the district.
Cracks reach Delhi
Earlier on Monday, TMC founder leader Sukhendu Sekhar Rai, 77, resigned from the Rajya Sabha and the party’s core membership, citing corruption and alleged mishandling of the 2024 rape and murder of a trainee doctor at Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College.
This took the TMC’s strength in the Senate to 12. Several TMC Lok Sabha MPs – said to number between six and 13 – met Adhikari and their leader Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar said they would write to LS chief Om Birla to get them recognized as a separate faction.
The party has 28 members in the Lok Sabha; The splinter group would need 19 people to escape disqualification under the anti-defection law.
The moves came in the wake of a revolt in the state legislative wing of the TMC, where around 60 TMC members backed ousted rebel Ritabrata Banerjee to lead the opposition over the official nominee.
Mamata Banerjee, accompanied by Abhishek Banerjee, attended the India Caucus meeting at the Constitution Club in Delhi, which attracted 23 parties and ended with the decision to meet repeatedly. Kharge, as the convener of the bloc, called for unity.
