The Internal Crisis and Split within the Trinamool Congress

The Trinamool Congress. For almost thirty years, it’s been all about Mamata Banerjee . Her authority, the mass appeal—that’s what held the party together. Now, it’s facing something rougher than anything they’ve seen before. A real crisis.

It just happened. Weeks after losing the West Bengal election to the BJP, the party was completely rocked from the inside. People are asking, and frankly, it’s a question that felt impossible until this week: who is actually still standing with Mamata Banerjee ?

The explosion happened this week. Fifty-eight MLAs just broke ranks. They successfully staked their claim to the party structure. They elected Ritabrata Banerjee as the Leader of Opposition. And the Assembly Speaker, Rathindra Bose , actually recognized him.

That’s the first formal split in nearly thirty years. Twenty-eight years since Mamata started this thing back in 1998.

But the rebels didn't just want to tear things down. They stopped short of directly challenging Mamata herself. Their criticism, it landed squarely on her nephew, Abhishek Banerjee , and the national general secretary role.

There was this careful narrative they built up. A story trying to pull Mamata away from the party’s internal mess.

One of the rebels told PTI something pointed. They said, “We accept Mamata Banerjee as our leader, but we don’t accept Abhishek Banerjee .”

Ritabrata Banerjee pushed it further. He suggested Mamata should take on the role of chief adviser to the legislature party. And he made it crystal clear: Abhishek would have absolutely no role in how the party operated.

Resentment had been building for a while, you know? Since that May election loss.

A lot of the MLAs seemed to feel the party decisions were getting way too centralized. Everything seemed to orbit the Diamond Harbour MP. That just fueled the doubts about who was actually in charge, about the succession.

This whole thing got really heated because of the signatures. Allegations started swirling—that signatures on documents submitted to the Speaker about the Leader of Opposition selection were forged.

What started as a technical spat, a procedural argument, it quickly turned into a massive revolt about where the party was going.

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The Shrinking Circle and Internal Dynamics

The circle around Mamata is shrinking. That’s the public fallout. You see it in how she moves.

When she came out after that election defeat, she was with just a handful of legislators and senior figures.

Firhad Hakim, Sovandeb Chattopadhyay, Madan Mitra, Ashok Deb, Kunal Ghosh, Biman Bandopadhyay. These are the old guard. People who have been there since 1998.

Their presence, it just hammered home something. The importance of those old loyalists when newer power centers were suddenly fighting inside the party.

It’s not just about numbers, observers are saying. It’s about the succession. It’s about the fact that this party has always been tied up with one person.

Unease got worse when Mamata reportedly asked the legislators to applaud Abhishek Banerjee for his campaign role right after the election loss.

It was meant as recognition. But some lawmakers saw it differently. They saw it as more proof that power was concentrating in one family.

The dissidents, they called their internal campaign ‘Operation Crown Prince.’ It was a reference to how they saw things being set up to position Abhishek as the only successor.

But even with that open challenge, they still kept using Mamata’s name. It reflects how popular she still is, but also the sheer risk involved in directly confronting the party founder.

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The High Command's Reaction

Then the high command moved. Swiftly.

Faced with the revolt, the TMC leadership acted fast. They dissolved all the committees, all the frontal organizations across West Bengal. They called it an organizational review. Introspection.

But critics? They saw it as a desperate move. An attempt to seize control in the middle of a massive power struggle.

Kunal Ghosh, one of the senior leaders, accused the rebels of betrayal. He argued that these internal disaGreements should have been settled inside the party. Not thrown out into the open like this.

The Mamata camp, too, pushed back. They questioned the whole legitimacy of the rebel faction’s actions. They raised serious questions about the paperwork, about those communications submitted to the Speaker.

So, where does this leave Mamata?

The immediate problem isn't just about the structure anymore. It’s about two competing centers of power. One side controls the party machinery, the symbol, the organization. The other side claims legitimacy through the sheer strength of the legislature.

Right now, the rebels still acknowledge Mamata is the face. But those events of the last fortnight have shown something brutal. Her authority inside the party structure? That can’t be taken for granted anymore.

As Bengal’s main opposition figure steps into this fog, the real question for the TMC isn't just about regaining control. It’s whether the party she built can even stay united if they can’t accept the structure she helped create.