The Internal Struggle for Control in the Trinamool Congress

The fight over who actually controls the Trinamool Congress just got really messy. It escalated fast after rival factions Mamata Banerjee’s camp and Ritabrata Banerjee, the Opposition leader both went knocking on the Election Commission of India door. They brought competing lists for a national working committee.

It instantly turned into a massive dispute over the party name, the election symbol itself, and who held real organizational control. Both sides are claiming they represent the 'real' TMC. It’s all very tangled up right now.

A day after removing Mamata Banerjee from the chair and setting up a new national working committee, those rebel MLAs made their move. They approached the election authorities demanding recognition as the official All India Trinamool Congress.

Monday was the big session for the rebels. They held it at some hotel in New Town, Kolkata. Claiming they had backing from sixty-five of the party’s eighty legislators, they voted by voice to get Mamata Banerjee off the chair entirely.

Then came the appointments. Howrah Central MLA Arup Roy got elected as the new party chief. He was a minister back when the TMC government was running from 2011 to 2026. Just another name shifting around.

The rebels argued they were in a constitutional crisis, something tied up in Article 20 of the party constitution. They claimed the three-year tenure for that national working committee, formed back in February 2022, had already expired.

Tuesday evening saw the move shift to official channels. The rebel MLAs visited the West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer’s office. They submitted a letter asking for recognition as the official party and demanding rights over the ‘jora ghash phool’ symbol.

Mamata Banerjee responded separately. She sent her own list to the Election Commission, insisting that her faction was the legitimate TMC group. That list included herself as chairperson, Abhishek Banerjee as national general secretary and Lok Sabha leader, plus Derek O’Brien and Dola Sen as joint secretaries. Subhashish Chakraborty handled the treasurer role, and Sovondeb Chatterjee was listed as the Assembly leader.

This whole situation is getting harder for Banerjee. She's already dealing with a breakaway group of Lok Sabha MPs aligned with the NDA, plus three Rajya Sabha MPs have resigned.

The rebels aren't stopping there either. They’ve hinted they might try to seize control of the party symbol and all the organization’s assets.

The argument quickly moved past just who was in charge internally. The rebels pointed out that they actually had the support of more than two-thirds of the MLAs, plus several elected councillors across the state. That kind of muscle matters.

“We are the real Trinamool Congress,” one senior rebel MLA put it. “We have a Leader of the Opposition chosen by us, supported by more than two-thirds in the Assembly. Obviously, we have a claim on the symbol.”

The financial side added another layer of trouble. Following complaints from the rebels, TMC bank accounts containing about four hundred and forty crore rupees got frozen. But even with those accounts locked up, Banerjee’s supporters seem pretty confident they can keep hold of both the symbol and access to party funds.

Krishnanagar MP Mahua Moitra stepped in on the symbol issue. She questioned the rebels directly: “How can you put the cart before the horse? They don't have the symbol yet. Let them try for the symbol first, then form whatever committee they want.” She also pointed out that according to the party constitution, Mamata Banerjee remains chairperson for life.

When it came to the frozen money, Moitra pressed on the process. She said proper court permission hadn’t been secured before freezing things.

The TMC had already expelled several rebel leaders. Arup Roy was among them, along with MLAs Javed Khan, Firhad Hakim, Rathin Ghosh, Biplab Mitra and Sabina Yeasmin. Former ministers Aroop Biswas and Snehashis Chakraborty were also removed. Still, despite those expulsions, the rebels seem to believe in their numerical strength.

Meanwhile, loyalists are preparing a counter-attack. They plan to challenge the rebels before the Election Commission and move things through the courts if they have to. Chattopadhyay already filed a case in the Calcutta High Court against the Assembly Speaker for letting Ritabrata become the Leader of the Opposition.

This whole mess echoes older political fights we’ve seen, like those involving the Shiv Sena and the NCP in Maharashtra. In both instances, rival factions fought tooth and nail before the Election Commission, the Speaker, and the Supreme Court over who controlled the party, legitimacy, symbols, and everything else.

The ECI and the Speaker tended to lean on how many seats a group had when making decisions favoring those led by Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar. But later, the Supreme Court weighed in. It observed that just having numerical strength isn't enough for disqualification proceedings. A political party and a legislature party are separate things, after all.

And these legal battles the ones from Shiv Sena and NCP they’re dragging on for months, sometimes even past how long legislators were in office. The path ahead for this fractured Trinamool Congress looks incredibly long and complicated. Election law focuses mostly on symbols. Disputes over money usually have to go through civil courts. That process could take years if they keep pushing things up to the Supreme Court.