Kolkata, Jun 18 (PTI) A group of TMC legislators loyal to Mamata Banerjee on Thursday secured a separate room and dedicated speaking time in the West Bengal Assembly after meeting Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, party leaders said.
The meeting came barely two weeks after 58 of the TMC’s 80 MLAs defied the party high command and backed expelled legislator Ritabrata Banerjee as the leader of the opposition instead of the party’s nominee, veteran MLA Sovandeb Chattopadhyay.
Chattopadhyay and former TMC spokesperson Kunal Ghosh, among the prominent faces of the Mamata Banerjee camp in the legislature party, described their meeting with the chief minister as positive and said their concerns regarding seating arrangements, security and legislative functioning had been addressed.
“We raised some specific issues before the chief minister. He showed us due respect. There was a detailed discussion on our seating arrangements, a separate room and security-related matters,” Chattopadhyay told reporters after the meeting.
According to the two leaders, Adhikari called Parliamentary Affairs Minister Shankar Ghosh during the discussion and directed him to immediately arrange a separate room for the legislators aligned with Mamata Banerjee and ensure that they were allotted independent time to participate in assembly debates.
The issue of seating inside the House also acquired political significance on the opening day of the session.
Ghosh said Chattopadhyay, the senior-most MLA in the Mamata Banerjee camp, was accorded prominence in the assembly seating arrangement.
“Today, we saw the chief minister occupied his designated seat. The seat traditionally associated with the leader of the opposition was allotted to Sovandeb Chattopadhyay, while Ritabrata Banerjee’s seat was elsewhere,” Ghosh said.
In a sharp attack on Ritabarata Banerjee, whose camp commands the support of a majority of TMC MLAs, Ghosh said the Mamata loyalists would not recognise his authority.
“Those who stab the party in the back through unethical means cannot be accepted as leaders by us,” he said.
The remarks reflected the deep mistrust between the Mamata Banerjee loyalists and the dissident bloc that has challenged her leadership following the TMC’s crushing defeat in the recent assembly elections.
While maintaining that the newly formed BJP government should be given some time to function, Ghosh said the group had already voiced concern over the ongoing hawker eviction drives and raised the issue with the chief minister.
The arrangements mark an unusual accommodation for a faction within the opposition ranks and effectively acknowledge the presence of two rival centres of authority within the TMC legislature party, whose internal battle has increasingly shifted from party forums to the floor of the assembly. PTI PNT ACD
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