TMC heading for a split similar to ones in Maharashtra?

Kolkata: With a rebellion by its legislators threatening to split the party, Trinamool Congress’s supremo Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday took to the streets for the first time since losing power, protesting the Bharatiya Janata Party government’s campaign to demolish thousands of makeshift shops run by small traders along roads and on railway platforms.

She was joined by only a handful of the TMC legislators and parliamentarians, mostly the old guards, at the site of the protest, even as speculation about a coup within the 28-year-old party gained momentum. Ritabrata Bandopadhyay, one of the two legislators expelled from the TMC on Monday, emerged as the face of the revolt overnight, with the majority of the party’s 80 legislators joining the rebel bandwagon. The rebels – close to the two-thirds mark required for an official split – are preparing to meet Rathindra Bose, the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, on Wednesday to start the process of claiming recognition as the “Prakrita Trinamool Congress (The Real Trinamool Congress)”.

If the coup succeeds, the fate of the TMC’s ‘twin-flower’ poll symbol could come under question, with both factions likely to stake a claim to it, leaving the Election Commission to decide.

The BJP, however, dismissed speculation about its role in orchestrating the rebellion within the TMC. “Whether the TMC suffers a split or not is not our concern. We have nothing to do with the internal crisis of the TMC,” Samik Bhattacharya, the state BJP president, said.

“If I remain alive, I will see the end of the BJP rule,” Mamata said, although her own TMC appeared on the verge of a split, much like the one suffered by Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena and Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party in Maharashtra in 2022 and 2023, respectively.

Ritabrata, however, dismissed the speculation about him leading the move to split the TMC. “I can speak for myself and Sandipan (Saha),” he said when the journalists asked him if over 50 legislators had signed up for the rebellion against the TMC leadership.

Mamata’s party had expelled Ritabrata and Sandipan on Monday after the chief minister of West Bengal’s new government, Suvendu Adhikari, revealed that the duo had alleged that their signatures had been forged on a resolution the opposition party’s general secretary Abhishek Banerjee had submitted to the Speaker of the state’s Assembly in support of the claim that the veteran lawmaker Sovandev Chattopadhyay had been elected as the leader of the TMC legislative party and hence should be recognised as the Leader of the Opposition. The Criminal Investigation Department of the West Bengal police launched an investigation into the alleged signature forgery.

“If the Speaker had any doubts, he should have asked for forensic tests of the signatures to check their authenticity,” Mamata said on Tuesday, adding: “The BJP is playing a dirty game.”

“I may have been expelled from the TMC, but Mamata Banerjee remains my leader,” Ritabrata told journalists at the premises of the state’s Assembly on Tuesday.

He, however, quickly added that the TMC had ceased to be Mamata Banerjee’s party and had been hijacked by the I-PAC, the political consultancy firm hired by it.

Ritabrata, then a member of the Rajya Sabha, had been expelled by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in 2017. He had then joined the TMC, which had sent him to the Rajya Sabha again in 2024. He contested and won in the Uluberia Purba constituency in the recent assembly elections in the state.

Tapas Roy, a minister in the new BJP government in the state, wrote on a social media platform earlier in the day that the TMC had suffered a devastating split. He wrote that Ritabrata would meet the Speaker of the Assembly with “almost 50 legislators” of the TMC. He drew an analogy between the crises of the NCP and the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra with what the TMC was going through.

Roy, who quit the TMC and joined the BJP in March 2024, later told journalists that his social media account was handled by others, not himself.

A large number of the TMC leaders had been publicly blaming Abhishek and the I-PAC for the debacle of the party in the assembly elections. The whiff of the brewing rebellion within the TMC, however, came to the public when nearly 60 of the party’s 80 legislators skipped a meeting convened by the party supremo, herself, at her residence in Kalighat in Kolkata on Sunday.

The move to stage the coup within the TMC gained momentum after Ritabrata and Sandipan were expelled on Monday. Nearly 50 legislators, including quite a few from the minority community, signed a resolution electing Ritabrata as the leader of the TMC legislative party, a source in the rebel group said, adding that the next move would be made after completing the process of collecting the signatures of two-thirds of the legislators.

Chattopadhyay, however, said that the majority of the TMC legislators would continue to be with Mamata, despite attempts by the BJP to split the party.

Mamata on Tuesday paid tribute to Mahatma Gandhi and B R Ambedkar before reaching the protest site, which had to be changed as the Kolkata Police denied permission for holding the event at the place where the TMC had originally planned it. The former chief minister, who used a megaphone to address the party workers and supporters, reiterated her allegation that the BJP had won the elections by manipulation with the help of the Election Commission. She hit out at the ruling BJP for the party’s alleged roles in the attacks on the TMC supporters and leaders, including Abhishek and Lok Sabha member Kalyan Banerjee, as well as for police actions against the party’s workers.

“Modi (Prime Minister Narendra Modi) has left West Bengal in the hands of anti-social elements and politicians who brought in the bulldozer culture. A darkness has descended on the state,” she said, protesting against the demolition of the makeshift shops set up by the small traders to eke out a living.

“The TMC's condition is now pathetic,” Adhikar, the chief minister of the state, said, claiming that only three parliamentarians and six legislators of the opposition party had joined the party supremo at the site of the protest on Tuesday.