TMC infighting out in open: Kalyan Banerjee slams party MPs Saugata, Mahua & Kirti; BJP fans the flames

New Delhi/Kolkata: The infighting among the Trinamool Congress’s parliamentarians came out in public with the party’s chief whip in the Lok Sabha, Kalyan Banerjee, openly criticising his colleagues, Saugata Roy and Kirti Azad, as well as another whom he did not name but referred to as a “versatile international lady”.

“I will resign and leave if Didi (Mamata Banerjee) just tells me once that what I did was wrong. Banerjee told journalists in New Delhi on Tuesday, even as Mahua Moitra, a TMC member of the Lok Sabha, wrote to the party supremo and West Bengal chief minister complaining against him. “I cannot tolerate her insulting behaviour with me, just because she is good-looking and speaks fluent English,” he said, without naming Moitra, but tacitly taking a jibe at the firebrand Member of Parliament of the TMC.

Roy also asked for the removal of Banerjee from the post of the TMC’s chief whip in the Lok Sabha. Banerjee accused Roy of tarnishing the image of the party.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, the principal challenger to the TMC, did its bit in bringing out the infighting within Mamata Banerjee’s party to the public domain. Amit Malviya, who oversees the saffron party’s affairs in West Bengal, shared a video showing a spat between Banerjee and a couple of other TMC MPs at the Nirvachan Sadan, the headquarters of the Election Commission of India, on April 4. Banerjee confirmed the authenticity of the video and alleged that Azad had recorded and circulated it.

Without naming Moitra, Banerjee alleged that ‘a woman MP’ had an altercation with him and asked the central paramilitary force personnel guarding the Nirvachan Sadan to arrest him. He also alleged that the ‘woman MP’ had been upset with him because he, himself, had argued on behalf of the TMC during the debate on the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2025, in the Lok Sabha, instead of accepting her request to let her speak. He also alleged that the spat at the Nirvachan Sadan happened after the ‘woman MP’ protested against the absence of her name among the signatories on the memorandum submitted to the EC on behalf of the party.

He alleged that the ‘woman MP’ had only spoken against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and industrialist Gautam Adani in her speeches in the Lok Sabha but never targeted other BJP leaders and spared the saffron party’s leaders from West Bengal.

Malviya also shared on X screenshots of messages being exchanged on the TMC MPs’ WhatsApp group, where Banerjee and Azad had a tiff.

Banerjee did not even spare Roy and alleged that the veteran TMC leader’s role in the 2014 ‘Narada Scam’ had tarnished the image of the party.

“I was not there when this altercation between Kalyan Banerjee and Mahua Moitra took place. I was at Vijay Chowk and the spat took place in front of the Election Commission office. I saw Mahua crying and complaining to several MPs, including those of other parties too, about the uncivilised behaviour of Kalyan,” said Roy.

He said that Kalyan was not fit to be on the post of TMC’s chief whip in the Lok Sabha. “But I leave it to Mamata Banerjee's judgment,” he added.

The infighting among the party MPs came to the public domain even as Banerjee’s TMC government found itself at the receiving end of the criticism by the BJP and the CPI (M) ever since the Supreme Court on April 3 upheld the Calcutta High Court’s April 22, 2024, verdict invalidating the appointment of the government school employees, who had been recruited by the state’s School Services Commission (SSC) in 2016. With the next assembly elections in West Bengal just about a year away, the BJP and the CPI (M) have been citing the verdicts of the Supreme Court as a vindication of their allegation about large-scale corruption by the ruling TMC’s leaders, including in government recruitment.