A coup in TMC, not rebellion

THE low cost of dissent and rebellion in the Trinamool Congress is striking. The strategy revolves around persuading elected TMC MPs to quit their party and join the NDA, where they can “work for the people” as well as “work for the constituency.” Several MPs, including those once close to Mamata Banerjee, like Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, seem to be falling in line.

Defeat has given these men and women the push they need to form breakaway huddles, for the moment within the Trinamool Congress. That’s the first step. The next will be to claim the name and party symbol as the breakaway Shiv Sena leader Eknath Shinde and Nationalist Congress Party leader Ajit Pawar successfully did in Maharashtra in 2023. The Election Commission and the judiciary,as well as the Speaker in Maharashtra enabled Shinde and Pawar to take over party brand names that evoked loyalty among voters and were familiar and popular to the public.

First-time MP Saayoni Ghosh, whose spitfire attacks on the BJP on the eve of the Assembly election went viral, has reportedly declared “there is no future in TMC.”

Her comment gives rise to the question, would these MPs have taken the same decision if the party had a “future”?

Rajya Sabha MP from Assam’s Barak valley Sushmita Dev, who resigned from Parliament and from the party, after feeling let down, has made it clear that she sees no future for herself after the TMC’s defeat. Dev has since found Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma to be her friend, philosopher and guide, after years of attacking the BJP. The other Rajya Sabha MP to quit the Parliament as well as his party, Sukhendu Shekhar Roy, is equally transparent. He hung on to the Trinamool Congress, despite his vocal criticism against Mamata Banerjee and her misgovernance after the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital rape and murder of a junior doctor last year. After her defeat last month, he evidently felt it was time to cut and run.

As rumours circulate of retired cricketer Yusuf Pathan and Kolkata Municipal Corporation leader Mala Roy jumping ship, it seems that rumours about the BJP being in close touch with dozens of Trinamool Congress leaders prior to the elections, is true. The BJP, it is now clear, did not encourage elections on the eve of the election because it did not want to carry any baggage. The putschist Leader of the Opposition in the state assembly, Ritabrata Banerjee, was nominated to contest on the party’s symbol.

The TMC MPs who are defecting are a unique bunch; they have defected, but for the moment not to another party. The putschists are in effect declaring their no-confidence in Mamata Banerjee’s leadership. Since all the defectors, both MPs, MLAs, councillors of municipalities and corporations, even panchayat functionaries, say that they were disapproving of the way in which the Trinamool Congress functioned, with power and decision-making concentrated in the Mamata Banerjee-Abhishek Banerjee’s hands even as no dissent was tolerated, it suggests that they were prepared to go along if the going was and would have continued to be good. Otherwise it is difficult to reconcile their silence and tolerance of corruption, intimidation, violence and abuse of power when they and their party, the Trinamool Congress, was in power.

The fight over who is the real Trinamool Congress is now in court. Or at least one part of it. On June 8, the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress filed a case against the recognition of Ritabrata Banerjee as Leader of Opposition in the West Bengal state assembly. On June 11, the Calcutta High Court in the same case granted Abhishek Banerjee interim protection from arrest, though it directed him to appear before the CID looking into the charges of forged signatures on the same day. His compliance with the High Court’s order, after days of playing hookey, is a sign that he is under pressure to do the right thing.

The weaker and more vulnerable Mamata Banerjee feels, the less likely it will be that she will make any drastic decisions about her problematic nephew. She is being pressed to sideline him or dump him; the “us versus him” tension has reached a flashpoint. Her loyalist and designated chief whip in the Lok Sabha, Kalyan Banerjee has erupted in rage: “I'm fighting for Mamata. I'm not fighting for anybody else. I'm fighting for the people of West Bengal and for the party. And who is he?"he has said, referring to Abhishek Banerjee.

Still, there is not much Mamata can do about the past, beyond accepting that the Trinamool Congress had committed every malpractice in the book. A party that grew exponentially after she won power by defeating the Left in 2011, was bound to acquire opportunists who saw in its disorganised and decentralised structure prospects of making money, wielding power and lording it over locals.

Truncating the Trinamool Congress has certainly been a big blow, at a time when she is looking for ways to explain the defeat. More coup than rebellion, the exit of the majority of TMC MLAs, who continue to be coy about being named,were elected on the Trinamool Congress ticket and hailed Mamata Banerjee as the champion leader.

As speculation snowballs about how she will tackle the break up by people elected in her name, the rumours of a TMC merger with the Congress are designed to make her look pathetic. Mamata’s meeting with Sonia Gandhi has acquired a different meaning — that she went crawling and crying for sanctuary, because she was in trouble.

It is unlikely that Mamata will wither away, no matter how fervently the putschists and the BJP and other parties that opposed the Trinamool Congress may want it. How much of a fight she can put up is the question. The political environment in West Bengal is hostile to her existence; after the police denied her permission to hold a rally in Kolkata and insisted she relocate to a cramped channel and the Criminal Investigation Department turned up at her residence and office in search of evidence linked to forged signatures of MLAs in the Leader of Opposition case, it is obvious that her freedom to function will be constrained. Her party workers and leaders are in hiding; councillors and corporators of municipalites have been arrested; kangaroo courts have sprouted dispensing punishment and cash seized from corrupt TMC leaders.

Leading a new party into a political battle against the CPI(M)-led Left Front was entirely different from the battle that Mamata Banerjee will have to lead to rebuild the Trinamool Congress. The BJP is a different party; it makes no bones about leaving as little space as possible to the opposition.