When the results of the West Bengal Assembly elections were announced on May 4, it emerged that the TMC, which had ruled the state for 15 years, was limited to just 80 seats in the 294-seat lower house. But with the recent collapse within the party, it appears that the election results were just the beginning of a series of problems for the Mamata Banerjee-led party.
This week, 58 MLAs openly rebelled and announced that they would become the main opposition party in Bengal, splitting the party vertically. When the leadership of the crisis-hit party called a meeting at President Mamata’s residence on Friday, only eight non-rebel party members showed up. These include Beena Mondal, Ashima Batra, Madan Mitra, Kunal Ghosh, Farhad Hakim, Subhandeep Chattopadhyay, Biman Banerjee and Ashok Kumar Deb, according to news agency ANI.
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Also present were six MPs: Dola Sen, Mala Roy, Kalyan Banerjee, Abhishek Banerjee, Derek O’Brien and Sudip Bandyopadhyay. It is worth noting that the TMC includes 28 MPs in the Lok Sabha and 13 in the Rajya Sabha.
Rebellion
The rebellion is being led by now-expelled party lawmaker Ritabrata Banerjee, who announced on Wednesday after a meeting with the Speaker of Parliament that she had been appointed leader of the opposition, plunging the party into an existential crisis.
This effectively marks the party’s first split in its 30 years of existence since Mamata founded it after separating from the Congress.
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Nearly half of the 34 Muslim lawmakers in the TMC supported Ritabrata Banerjee, the former student leader who was first expelled from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in 2017 and sent by the TMC to the Rajya Sabha in 2024.
The rebels said they would ask Mamata to be their “chief advisor” but would not interact with her nephew and party’s national general secretary Abhishek, who emerged as the party’s second-in-command in 2016, HT had earlier reported.
“The TMC Legislative Party is a team of 58 MLAs who have won the TMC symbol. We are the real TMC now in the Assembly,” Ritabrata said.
“The Speaker of Parliament has accepted our demand,” he told reporters after his meeting with the Speaker of Parliament.
TMC rebellion reaches court
The TMC is planning to take legal action over West Bengal Assembly Speaker’s decision to appoint TMC rebel Ritabrata as Leader of the Opposition, with party MP Kalyan Banerjee terming the decision “illegal”.
“We have decided that the House of Representatives appointed by the Speaker is illegal. We will approach the court against this order on Monday. We will file a petition in the Supreme Court,” Banerjee said. He also accused the BJP of “killing” TMC workers and filing false cases against them.
“We will fight in the streets, we will fight in court,” Kalyan said after party leader and former chief minister Mamata Banerjee held a meeting at her residence in Kolkata’s Kalighat area on Friday.
