Amid speculations of a ‘rift’ with nephew, Mamata forms new working committee

Trinamool Congress has formed a new 20-member national working committee, party leader Partha Chatterjee announced on Saturday.

With Mamata Banerjee re-elected as the party’s chairperson in an organisational meet held earlier in February, all power now rests with her till new post-holders are declared.

The committee, besides Mamata, includes Amit Mitra, Sudip Bandyopadhyay, Sukhendu Sekhar Ray, and Abhishek Banerjee, her nephew. Abhishek has been the national general secretary of the party.

The meeting was held on Saturday evening, where seven prominent party leaders were present with the Trinamool chief. The names of the post-holders will be announced in due course of time, Partha told reporters after the meeting. The formation of the new structure will be conveyed to the Election Commission of India, Partha added.

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Much had been speculated about the Saturday meeting, with talk of a ‘rift’ between Mamata and her nephew Abhishek. The two points of contention that have recently left party leaders and supporters divided are the ‘one person, one post’ stand that Abhishek has been vocal about. Second, the alleged ‘interference’ of Prashant Kishore led cross-party political advocacy group, I-PAC in party’s policies.

On Friday, young Trinamool leaders, considered close to Abhishek, had taken to social media to support one person, one post cause. Trinamool leader and Kolkata mayor Firhad Hakim addressed a press conference to clarify that these posts are not endorsed by the party’s top leader.

A second point that’s being seen as a point of contention is I-PAC’s role, level of involvement in the party’s activities. A list of candidates declared for local municipal elections, earlier, differed from what was uploaded, and I-PAC was blamed for the same. I-PAC representatives, however, clarified that the group has no involvement in the list of names.

On Friday, when senior party leader and minister Chandrima Bhattacharya’s Twitter page reflected the support for one person, one post stand, she said that this was changed by I-PAC. I-PAC clarified in a Twitter post, “I-PAC doesn’t handle any digital properties of (official handle tagged) AITC or any of its leaders. Anyone making such (a) claim is either uninformed or is blatantly lying. AITC should look into if and how their digital properties and/or that of their leaders are being ‘allegedly (mis)used’.”

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