It’s just been a little over a month since Mamata Banerjee and her party Trinamool Congress suffered a crushing defeat in West Bengal assembly polls against the Bharatiya Janata Party, and now, she is facing mounting troubles which don’t seem to end.
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The TMC supremo is now facing an existential crisis for her party as her loyalists turn their back on her, one after another. She first faced a rebellion in her home ground West Bengal, where 58 out of TMC’s total 80 MLAs went against her to back party’s Ritabrata Banerjee as the Leader of Opposition in the state assembly. Now, the rebellion has moved to Delhi as a major chunk of the party’s parliamentarians have decided to break away and become a separate bloc.
The dissident MPs will meet Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on Monday with a letter seeking to be recognised as the “real TMC”, a move termed by Mamata loyalists as illegal, claiming that the according to the law, the dissidents will have to merge with another party and can’t exist as a separate bloc.
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The former West Bengal chief minister and her nephew, Abhishek Banerjee, are also facing back-to-back summons and raids by probe agencies in several cases, only adding to the TMC supremo’s troubles.
These are the five fresh jolts faced by Mamata this week-
Legal notice by Kakoli Ghosh’s son:Kakoli Ghosh, once a staunch Mamata loyalist and confidant, is leading the dissident MPs of TMC to break away from the party. Now, her son Baidyanath Ghosh Dastidar has sent a legal notice to Mamata and other Trinamool leaders — Mahua Moitra, Kalyan Banerjee, Sougata Roy and Sonali Guha — over alleged statements claiming that he had sought an MLA ticket from the party to fight state assembly polls from the Barasat assembly constituency. A psyciatrist by profession, he issued an ultimatum asking the addressed TMC leaders to retract “all false, defamatory, and misleading statements” regarding him and issue a public clarification and apology within fifteen days of issuance of the notice.
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Saayoni Ghosh’s betrayal:Earlier this week, TMC MP from Jadavpur Saayoni Ghosh, was learnt to have joined the rebel camp in a development that came a big jolt to Mamata who is struggling to keep her party intact. Saayoni is a young TMC MP who backed Mamata after defeat in state assembly polls saying that Mamata was “defeated by stealing votes, by looting votes”. An actor-turned-politician, Saayoni was asked on Sunday about switching sides, to which she cryptically replied, “I will not say anything now. I will only speak when the time is right.”
Sudip Bandyopadhyay to switch sides? – TMC MP and Mamata loyalist Mahua Moitra launched a scathing attack on her fellow Trinamool MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay on Sunday, saying that his “his mask and his wig both come off” after he was seen meeting education minister Dharmendra Pradhan in Delhi while. She claimed that Bandyopadhyay misled the party about his whereabouts and told them that he was in Apollo hospital due to a “tummy bug” but was later seen at Bhupender Yadav’s residence. “Dada pls change your X handle to @SudipBJPBTeam at least. Dont’ use our name,” Mahua wrote on X.
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CID, police raids and summons, one after another:Major drama unfolded in Kolkata on the intervening night of Friday and Saturday when West Bengal police, along with central forces, reached TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee’s residence at 2 am in the night to conduct searches reportedly while looking for his personal assistant Sumit Roy in a fraud case. This prompted Mamata to rush to her nephew’s Kalighat home, who stayed there till the search was completed. Earlier this week, Abhishek was grilled by the state’s CID in the forged signature case linked to documents submitted by the TMC before a faction of it rebelled and backed Ritabrata Banerjee as LoP in West Bengal assembly.
Mamata rejigs TMC’s youth, women wings:In an attempt to strengthen her grip on her party organisation, Mamata made major changes to the leadership of TMC’s youth and women wings. She replaced Saayoni Ghosh as TMC’s youth wing president Arnab Banerjee, a youth leader, barely a week after her appointment to the position, news agency PTI reported citing sources. This comes after Saayoni reportedly switched sides to join the rebel camp in Parliament. Mamata also replaced Kolkata Dakshin MP Mala Roy with Alifa Ahmed, TMC MLA from Kaliganj in Nadia district, as TMC’s women’s wing president, after Roy was also believed to have joined the dissidents.
