Kolkata: Two letters addressed to two speakers and voilà – the procedural requirements of a split have been fulfilled. The Trinamool Congress now stands divided three ways, like an old-fashioned circus, except each of the three rings operates separately from the others. Or does it?
One ring has a clear ringmaster – Mamata Banerjee – the founder and proprietor of the Trinamool Congress brand. Yet neither she nor the party is entirely certain who remains inside her circus. The second ring has a Leader of the Opposition – Rathindra Basu – a first-term member of the legislative assembly and a 2017 entrant, who was formally recognised by the West Bengal assembly speaker on June 5.
The third and last ring is a fresh bloc of the Trinamool Congress, which has a chief whip in the Lok Sabha – Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar – a long-standing associate of the former chief minister. Her position was endorsed by Speaker Om Birla on June 8.
The two speakers seem to have concluded that all they needed to do was acknowledge the bloc that submitted a letter claiming the posts of LoP and chief whip, supported by an unverified two-thirds of the total legislators belonging to the TMC. The Lok Sabha bloc headed by Ghosh Dastidar has openly declared its allegiance to the National Democratic Alliance. The West Bengal assembly bloc has not done so.
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) endorsement of Dastidar’s revolt is entirely visible; her bloc was hosted by Union environment minister and junior architect of the party’s West Bengal strategy, Bhupendra Yadav. The attendance of Suvendu Adhikari at the gathering further reinforced the link.
In addition, Rajya Sabha MP Sukhendu Shekhar Roy’s resignation from parliament and the party is a side act; he remained when Jawhar Sircar stepped down after both criticised Banerjee’s leadership in the aftermath of the R.G. Kar Medical College rape and murder case. While Sircar’s resignation represented an ethical and moral decision; those who stayed made a decision as well; favouring righteous statements of self-exoneration after the TMC defeat rather than accepting responsibility.
BJP’s strategy
The necessity driving the BJP is evident; it requires as much support as possible in the Lok Sabha – from partners and loyalists – because it heads a minority government. By adding 19 of the 29 TMC MPs in the Lok Sabha that Dastidar claims belong to her bloc, and whose signatures accompanied the letter submitted to Om Birla, the NDA’s overall strength rises to 312 members.
This remains below the two-thirds threshold the BJP is pursuing.
The urgency stems from the BJP’s failure to pass the electoral reforms-delimitation-women’s reservation bill and constitutional amendment agenda in parliament in April because the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance – the INDIA bloc – succeeded in rallying its members and preventing the passage of a quiet restructuring of the state legislatures through unilateral decisions on implementation.
Additional amendments remain on the BJP’s agenda, including the ‘One Nation-One Election’ proposal that would reshape the fundamentals of a democracy, where governments change whenever the ruling party or coalition loses its majority.
The appearance of an opposition is essential for the BJP to counter accusations that India is an “electoral autocracy”. By recognising the Ritabrata Banerjee bloc as part of the opposition, the BJP has preserved that appearance and obtained precisely what it seeks – a compliant opposition.
The bloc has been careful about openly revealing its affiliations. One reason is that the BJP neither requires nor desires the bloc as a formally recognised ally. The party already secured a two-thirds majority in the state on May 4. The addition of around 60 MLAs to the same camp would, in fact, undermine the BJP’s assertion that it values multiparty politics and an autonomous opposition.
Who will claim the TMC flower?
The development leaves the alternative LoP nominated by Mamata Banerjee’s bloc in limbo. Sovandeb Chattopadhyay is, and is also not, the LoP. Likewise, Kalyan Banerjee is neither fully recognised nor entirely sidelined in the Lok Sabha; he was not accepted as chief whip even though he was nominated by the original TMC.
How many legislative parties are now claiming to be the TMC in the Lok Sabha and the West Bengal assembly then?
The TMC split raises a significant question: can there be a floating legislative/parliamentary party that has no existence beyond recognition by the respective speakers and therefore exists solely on that basis? By definition, a legislative/parliamentary bloc is assumed to be attached to a party.
The two blocs, one in Kolkata and one in New Delhi, have broken away from the party to which they originally belonged. Whether Ghosh Dastidar or Ritabrata Banerjee, both contested elections on Trinamool Congress tickets. Ghosh Dastidar won from Barasat in the 2024 Lok Sabha election; Ritabrata Banerjee won from Uluberia Purba in Howrah district on May 4.
Retaining the brand name is both practical and expedient, because the Trinamool label allows both groups to conduct legislative affairs with relative ease.
The battle over the name
The Election Commission of India and the judiciary will ultimately determine who controls the brand. There is precedent. In Maharashtra, Sharad Pawar, who founded the Nationalist Congress Party, is no longer the owner of the name or the clock symbol; the EC allotted both to the breakaway faction led by former NCP leader Ajit Pawar. The Shiv Sena and its bow-and-arrow symbol are similarly controlled by Eknath Shinde after he split the party.
History, however, records that the Trinamool Congress was established by Mamata Banerjee in 1998 after she separated from the Congress. She designed the grass-and-flowers symbol to reflect the political constituency she intended to mobilise and lead. Though Dastidar stood with Banerjee when the party was founded, she was never the owner of the brand.
Ritabrata Banerjee, meanwhile, is a recent entrant who revived his political career with the TMC after being expelled from the Communist Party of India (Marxist). He is certainly not an original member.
The Trinamool name plainly retains a certain allure and, therefore, value that both blocs wish to preserve. Neither side is willing to let it go. Despite their allegations of abuse of authority, misuse of government institutions and machinery, and of the party functioning as a “state party”, the 60 “rebel” (sic) MLAs – all of whom contested as Trinamool Congress candidates — appear to feel that adopting a different name and creating a new party would be politically risky.
They seek the name without accepting the responsibility of having coexisted with corruption and intimidation for years. Having contested on the symbol and relied on the party’s organisational machinery to campaign and win, the attempt at disassociation appears evasive.
Indeed, their rebellion reinforces the BJP’s campaign narrative dating back to 2021 that the TMC and Mamata Banerjee have employed intimidation and violence to divert funds from government projects and schemes, institutionalising corruption and outsourcing territory to strongmen to collect votes and keep citizens subdued.
This mirrors what occurred with the Communist Party name – multiple splits have taken place since 1964, when the party divided into the CPI and the CPI(M). A subsequent split created the CPI (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation; that faction fragmented further, producing several Maoist groups that retained the Communist Party name.
A name carries substantial power, and that power is difficult to overcome. The coming dispute over the Trinamool name and symbol will be resolved by the election authorities and the courts. It will then be judged by the electorate when the next cycle of elections arrives – likely later this year, when municipal and corporation elections are scheduled.
The issue will, however, need to be resolved well before the 2029 Lok Sabha election, a contest crucial to the BJP’s plans to consolidate overarching influence over India’s political landscape by fostering a cooperative democracy in which the opposition serves primarily as a formality.
Shikha Mukherjee is a Kolkata-based commentator.