It has been just over a month since Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress party suffered a crushing defeat in the West Bengal Assembly elections against the BJP, and now she is facing mounting problems that never seem to end.
The TMC president now faces an existential crisis for her party, as her loyalists turn their backs, one by one. She initially faced a revolt in her home state of West Bengal, where 58 of the total 80 MLAs in the TMC opposed her for supporting Ritabrata Banerjee as leader of the opposition in the state assembly. Now, the rebellion has moved to Delhi, where a large segment of the party’s parliamentarians have decided to break away and form a separate bloc.
The dissident MPs will meet Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on Monday with a letter seeking to recognize them as the “true TMC”, a move Mamata loyalists have described as illegal, claiming that as per the law, the dissenters will have to merge with another party and cannot exist as a separate bloc.
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The former West Bengal Chief Minister and her nephew, Abhishek Banerjee, are also facing successive summonses and raids by investigating agencies in several cases, adding to the TMC’s woes.
These are the five new shocks Mamata faces this week-
Legal notice from Kakoli Ghosh’s son: Kakoli Ghosh, once a staunch loyalist and confidant of Mamata, is leading dissident TMC MPs to break away from the party. Now, her son Baidyanath Ghosh Dastidar has sent a legal notice to Mamata and other Trinamool leaders — Mahua Moitra, Kalyan Banerjee, Sujata Roy and Sonali Guha — over alleged statements alleging that he sought an MLA ticket from the party to fight the state assembly elections from Barasat Assembly constituency. A psychiatrist, he issued an ultimatum asking the TMC leaders to retract “all false, defamatory and misleading statements” about him and issue a public clarification and apology within fifteen days of issuing the notice.
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Sayoni Ghosh’s betrayal: Earlier this week, TMC MP from Jadavpur, Sayoni Ghosh, learned that she had joined the rebel camp in a development that came as a big shock to Mamata who is struggling to keep her party intact. Sayuni is a young TMC lawmaker who supported Mamata after the defeat in the state assembly polls, saying Mamata was “defeated by stealing votes and plundering votes”. Actress-turned-politician Sayoni was asked on Sunday about her change of heart, and she responded ambiguously: “I won’t say anything now. I will only speak when the time is right.”
Sudip Bandyopadhyay to switch sides? – TMC MP and Mamata loyalist Mahua Moitra launched a scathing attack on fellow Trinamool MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay on Sunday, saying his “mask and wig have come off” after he was seen meeting Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan in Delhi during the course. She alleged that Bandyopadhyay misled the party about his whereabouts and told them that he was at Apollo Hospital due to an “abdominal problem” but was later seen at Bhupinder Yadav’s house. “Please Dada change your X handle to at least @SudipBJPBTeam. Don’t use our name,” Mahua wrote on X.
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Criminal Investigation Department, police raids, and summonses, one after the other: The major drama unfolded in Kolkata on the intervening night of Friday and Saturday when the West Bengal Police, along with Central forces, reached the residence of TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee at 2 am to conduct searches while searching for his personal aide Sumit Roy in a fraud case. This prompted Mamata to rush to her nephew’s house in Kalighat, where he remained until the search was over. Earlier this week, Abhishek was questioned by the state CID in the forged signature case linked to documents submitted by the TMC before a faction of it rebelled and supported Ritabrata Banerjee as a member of the West Bengal Assembly.
Mamata reconstitutes youth and women wings of TMC: In a bid to strengthen her grip on her party organisation, Mamata made major changes to the leadership of the youth and women’s wings of the TMC. She replaced Sayoni Ghosh as TMC’s youth wing president Arnab Banerjee, a youth leader, just a week after she was appointed to the post, news agency PTI reported, citing sources. This comes after Sayoni reportedly switched sides to join the rebel camp in Parliament. Mamata also replaced Kolkata Dakshin MP Mala Roy with Alifa Ahmed, TMC MLA from Kaliganj in Nadia district, as president of the TMC’s women’s wing, after Roy was also believed to have joined the dissidents.
