Kolkata: The Trinamool Congress on Wednesday, June 3, suffered its first split in its 28-year history as 58 rebel MLAs elected expelled leader Ritabrata Banerjee as Leader of Opposition, wresting control of its legislature party, and secured recognition from the Assembly Speaker, plunging Mamata Banerjee’s outfit into its gravest internal crisis since its inception.
Within hours, a rattled TMC leadership dissolved all party committees and frontal organisations across West Bengal in what appeared to be an attempt to regain political control amid a fast-escalating power struggle.
The dramatic rebellion, unfolding within two months of the party’s crushing defeat in the assembly elections, exposed a deep rupture between the organisation and its elected legislators, raising questions over leadership, succession and the future direction of the party that has dominated Bengal politics for more than a decade.
The rebel camp, led by Ritabrata Banerjee and fellow expelled MLA Sandipan Saha, submitted letters of support from 58 legislators before Speaker Rathindra Bose, comfortably crossing the two-thirds threshold required under the anti-defection law for recognition as a separate bloc.
“Our claim has been accepted by the Speaker,” Banerjee said.
Claiming legitimacy based on numbers, he asserted that the dissident faction now represented the true opposition in the House.
“The TMC legislative party is a team of 58 MLAs who won on the TMC symbol,” he said.
The Speaker’s acceptance effectively formalised the first organisational rupture in a party founded by Mamata Banerjee in 1998 after her break from the Congress.
New leadership structure
Banerjee said two more legislators, currently outside the state, had conveyed their support and were expected to formally join the camp soon.
The rebel leader said the Speaker had accepted the new composition of the legislature party and opened the office meant for the Leader of the Opposition for him.
The dissident camp unveiled a new leadership structure, naming Ritabrata Banerjee as LoP and Akhruzzaman as chief whip. Senior legislators and party old-timers Javed Ahmed Khan, Sandipan Saha, Sabina Yasmin and Shiuli Saha were appointed deputy leaders.
Several veteran TMC legislators joined the rebellion, including Samar Mukhopadhyay, Arup Roy, Rathin Ghosh, Javed Khan and Prasun Banerjee. Yet, significantly, the rebels stopped short of directly challenging Mamata Banerjee’s primacy.
In their communication to the Speaker, they continued to recognise her as chairperson of the Trinamool Congress while making it equally clear that they no longer accepted the authority of her nephew and party national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee in the functioning of the legislature party.
Ritabrata seeks Mamata’s guidance, says no role for Abhishek Banerjee
“We accept Mamata Banerjee as our leader but do not accept Abhishek Banerjee,” a leader associated with the dissident camp said.
Seeking to soften the optics of the revolt, Ritabrata Banerjee even appealed to the former chief minister to guide the legislature party.
“We would request Mamata Banerjee to play the role of chief adviser to the legislative party,” he said.
In a significant political gesture, the expelled leader appealed to Mamata Banerjee to guide the legislative party despite the revolt against her organisational leadership.
“We would request Mamata Banerjee to play the role of the chief adviser of the legislative party,” he said.
However, the Mamata Banerjee camp questioned the validity of the rebels’ move, claiming that the communication to the Speaker was submitted on plain paper rather than the party’s official letterhead. It maintained that only the party chairperson and national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee were empowered to convey such decisions to the Assembly.
Unfazed by the challenge, Ritabrata Banerjee asserted that every step had been taken in conformity with parliamentary conventions and legislative rules.
The rebellion traces its immediate origins to the controversy surrounding the selection of the Leader of Opposition after the elections.
The dispute erupted when a proposal sent to the Speaker seeking recognition of senior TMC MLA Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay allegedly contained forged signatures of several legislators. The allegations led to an FIR and a CID probe.
What began as a procedural dispute soon snowballed into a battle for control of the legislature party and eventually into the biggest challenge to Mamata Banerjee’s authority since she founded the party.
Recognising the seriousness of the threat, the Mamata Banerjee-led faction moved swiftly on the organisational front, announcing a comprehensive review of its structure and functioning before reconstituting all organisational units.
Significantly, Ritabrata Banerjee was state president of the TMC’s trade union, whereas Abhishek Banerjee was the TMC national general secretary.
Political observers viewed the move as an acknowledgement that the crisis had gone beyond routine factionalism and entered the realm of a struggle for control of the party itself.
‘We will not oppose for the sake of opposition’
“We will oppose the government’s policies that we don’t think are right. But we will not oppose for the sake of opposition,” he said.
Thanking Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari for inviting opposition legislators to an administrative meeting at the state secretariat ‘Nabanna’ earlier in the day, he said rebel MLAs from Kolkata, Howrah and North 24 Parganas had attended the meeting.
“We will play the role of a responsible and constructive opposition. We will fight the government eye to eye where necessary, but we will also appreciate positive steps taken by it,” he said.
Seeking to project a collective style of functioning, Banerjee rejected suggestions of one-man leadership.
“I am not a boss. I do not believe in bossism. I believe in ‘we’. All decisions will be taken through discussions,” he said.
Akhruzzaman, appointed chief whip by the dissident camp, alleged that the official TMC leadership failed to follow established parliamentary procedures while electing the Leader of the Opposition after the assembly polls.
Roots of the rebellion
The roots of the rebellion can be traced to the controversy surrounding a proposal sent to the Speaker seeking recognition of senior TMC MLA Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay as Leader of the Opposition. The proposal triggered allegations that signatures of several MLAs had been forged, prompting the registration of a first information report (FIR) and a Criminal Investigation Department (CID) probe.
It was Banerjee and fellow rebel MLA Sandipan Saha who first flagged the alleged irregularities before Assembly authorities, transforming what initially appeared to be an internal dispute into a battle for control of the legislature party.
On Wednesday, that battle appeared to reach a decisive stage.
The Speaker’s acceptance of the dissidents’ claim formalised the first split, leaving the Mamata Banerjee-led organisation facing an unprecedented challenge from within and setting the stage for a prolonged struggle over the party’s political and organisational future.
Split echoes that of Maharashtra
For many, the unfolding events carried unmistakable echoes of Maharashtra.
Like the Shiv Sena split engineered by Eknath Shinde in 2022 and the Nationalist Congress Party split led by Ajit Pawar in 2023, the Bengal rebellion has been built around numerical strength within the legislature party rather than control of the parent organisation.
But there remains one critical difference.
Unlike Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray, who was no longer alive when the Maharashtra split unfolded, Mamata Banerjee remains an active political force. That perhaps explains why even her rebels continue to publicly acknowledge her leadership while simultaneously dismantling her authority within the legislature party.
The parallels nevertheless remain striking. The architect of the rebellion is Ritabrata Banerjee, a former CPI(M) leader and Rajya Sabha member who once rose rapidly within the TMC after being expelled by the CPI(M).
The political beneficiary, many observers argue, is Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, himself once one of Mamata Banerjee’s closest lieutenants before crossing over to the BJP and emerging as her fiercest rival.
Political irony
The crisis also carries a layer of political irony that has not gone unnoticed by the opposition.
Both the CPI(M) and Congress said the TMC was now experiencing the same politics of defections that it had perfected after coming to power in 2011.
According to CPI(M) and Congress leaders, between 2011 and 2021, during the 16th and 17th Assemblies, at least 65 legislators from the Left and Congress camps crossed over to the Trinamool without any of them facing disqualification under the anti-defection law.
“History has come full circle,” CPI(M) leader Sujan Chakraborty remarked.
Senior TMC leader Kunal Ghosh, however, accused the dissidents of betraying the party at a difficult moment.
“These differences could have been resolved within the party. This is backstabbing,” he said.
The BJP wasted little time in exploiting the turmoil.
“Mamata Banerjee has lost control of her legislative party. This is only the beginning,” BJP IT department head Amit Malviya said in a social media post.
Mamata’s challenge now extends far beyond retaining organisational control
The rebellion threatens to create two competing centres of authority within the TMC -one controlling the party apparatus including symbol and funds and another claiming legitimacy through legislative numbers.
The battle ahead is likely to be fought not merely over posts and positions but over the ownership of the TMC’s political legacy itself.
For a party that once appeared inseparable from the personality and authority of its founder, Wednesday’s developments marked a historic rupture.
The first split in the TMC since its inception has arrived not from outside but from within, opening a new and uncertain chapter in Bengal politics and raising existential questions about the future of one of India’s most formidable regional parties.
