It’s the last thing Mamata Banerjee needed.
She had barely lived down the heckling at Oxford on 28 March when she found herself plunged into the biggest challenges she has faced, if not ever, then certainly in her third term as chief minister. Over 25,000 teachers and non-teaching staff were suddenly jobless because some Trinamool Congress (TMC) party leaders decided to sell some of those posts to line their pockets.
The sudden exit of the staff is pushing the state’s education system to the edge of collapse. Across the state, they are out on the streets, picketing and protesting their plight and being lathi-charged and teargassed by police, drawing sharp condemnation in Bengal and beyond.
At such a time, the last thing Mamata needed was an ugly, spiteful fight breaking out between her party’s MPs. What’s worse, records of that slanging match—in video and WhatsApp texts—ended up with the BJP, which gleefully put it all out in the public, causing the TMC easily its worst–ever embarrassment. A party that projected a picture of being well-knit and united under the strict-but-benevolent leadership of Didi is now looking like a fish market, riven by vicious, cut-throat rivalries.
Doesn’t the TMC care about how people see it? Well, of course it does. But what is giving it sleepless nights is a question that Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, and Bengal’s own Feluda would find most familiar: whodunit? Who shot the video of the fight, who leaked it to the BJP, and who leaked the squabble between MPs Kirti Azad and Kalyan Banerjee from a WhatsApp group of TMC’s Lok Sabha MPs?
In short, who is the traitor, the Trojan horse, the BJP mole?
Unlucky thirteen
On 4 April, MPs Derek O’Brien and Kalyan Banerjee led a team of 15 MPs to the Election Commission (EC) to submit a memorandum questioning the linking of Aadhar to EPIC cards. The memorandum has 13 signatures on it, with O’Brien at number one and Banerjee in second place. Eleven other names are printed on a separate page and signed. Total 13.
At least two other MPs were present: Ritabrata Banerjee and Mohua Moitra. The latter has not said anything publicly. However, Kalyan Banerjee has said that Moitra was peeved because her name was not on the list and because he had not given her time to speak in the Lok Sabha on the Waqf Bill.
Banerjee also said Azad, who intervened in the fight on Moitra’s behalf, was annoyed with him. This was because he had rebuked Azad for conducting a signature campaign among MPs for the opening of a branch of a Bengali mishtir dokan or sweet shop in the Parliament complex.
After the showdown at the EC, the TMC MPs gathered at Vijay Chowk to address a press meet. Other party MPs were already waiting there. Among them was Sougata Roy, who said he saw Moitra crying over her clash with Banerjee. Roy ticked Banerjee off, who harked back to the Narada scam, which prompted Roy to say Banerjee must be removed from the post of ‘chief whip’ in the Lok Sabha.
The showdowns—inside the EC office and outside—have been discussed and dissected ad nauseum. But what of the consequences?
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The signal
None of this is flattering for the TMC, that’s for sure. Every other party has dissidence and factions. The TMC has had its own set of skirmishes, but it has managed to put up a united front. That image has been damaged, certainly among peers, especially in INDIA, and the BJP is making the most of it.
Sources in the TMC have told me that the four major players in the showdown have received calls from party seniors. All four have been told to turn their volumes down and keep it that way. Banerjee, Azad, and Roy have gone silent. Moitra has as well, except on X, where she has informed she has filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court on the Waqf Act. And that she is also campaigning for police action against the Right-wingers who want fishmongers at Chittaranjan Park market in Delhi to move away from a temple that now adjoins their stalls.
Things are cooling down, and the TMC leaders are heaving sighs of relief. But there is one signal the showdown has sent out that the TMC can ignore only at its peril: Mamata, lurching from one crisis to another in West Bengal, is losing her iron grip on party affairs in the capital. And that could hurt the TMC.
The teachers’ protests are gathering steam. Their protests are drawing public support, also from those who had stunned the TMC last August when they hit the streets with stunning force against the rape and murder of the trainee doctor at Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College Hospital.
A repeat of that explosion of public disaffection is something the TMC cannot afford in an election year. West Bengal is going to need Mamata Banerjee’s full attention for the next 12 months. If the centre doesn’t hold, 2026 may not be a foregone conclusion after all.
Monideepa Banerjie is a senior journalist based in Kolkata. She tweets @Monideepa62. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)
Both Pakistan and Mamata Banerjee frequently appear to be in crisis, frequently in about to collapse state, failed state, end game, etc., but they will be back to all well status after sometime.