Abhishek Banerjee is rising in TMC. Mamata still keeping him on a tight leash

Many veteran leaders are miffed with Abhishek for trying to push through two party reforms.

File photo of Mamata and Abhishek Banerjee | ANI

In politics, there are no permanent friends or enemies. And this is true not just of competing political parties but also of members of the same political party. Not even if you are a relative—a parent or sibling or uncle or aunt—can you bank on blood being thicker than water. Remember, in recent times, the NCP family drama in Maharashtra between uncle Sharad Pawar and nephew Ajit Pawar? Now, signals beeping out of Kolkata’s most famous Kalighat address, besides the temple to Goddess Kali, suggest the pithy axiom about impermanent friends and foes may just hit Mamata and Abhishek Banerjee of West Bengal’s Trinamool Congress.

Lately, the demand for Abhishek as deputy chief minister has come from a slim section of the party and been ignored. Doubters may be reading between the lines and see an aspirational nephew champing at the bit, while his aunt seems set for a fourth term as chief minister of Bengal in 2026. But Mamata is such a master politician, if still occasionally mercurial, that just to spite and confound them, she may suddenly install Abhishek as a minister, or who knows, deputy chief minister, out of the blue.

Only an extreme step like this can silence questions about ties that bind the pishi-bhaipo aka aunt-nephew equation. But till Abhishek’s formal coronation, the questions about whether all is well between the two will continue to pop up much like a pesky hernia.

Monday blues

The meeting of top TMC brass at Kalighat on Monday did nothing to quell that speculation. It was held day after a self-declared Abhishek loyalist, Humayun Kabir, an MLA from Murshidabad, told anyone who would listen that Mamata was overworked, and that the nephew should be made deputy chief minister and given at least the home portfolio.

But instead of elevating him, has Mamata effectively cut Abhishek to size? The party named several spokespersons and Abhishek figured in the list. He will be national spokesman—one of around half a dozen, including newbie Sagarika Ghose.

Three disciplinary committees were formed. Abhishek was not in a single one. Which is alright if you recall he is the national general secretary of the all-India Trinamool Congress (whatever that means since TMC has been derecognised as a national party as it does not have the required number of seats in other states.)

But people appointed to the committees—almost all of them senior TMC leaders—are believed to be miffed with Abhishek for trying to push through two party reforms. First is an age-limit for party candidates and the second is one leader, one post. If enforced, it would put a number of veteran TMC leaders to grass, leaders who are not ready to ride into the sunset yet. Among the most vocal are Kolkata mayor Firhad Hakim and MPs Kalyan Banerjee and Saugata Roy. They grudgingly accept Abhishek as Mamata’s successor, but what is the hurry?

There are reports of pishi-bhaipo friction outside of the political boxing ring too. In October, Ei Samay, a Bengali newspaper, suddenly found ads from the state government had stopped coming. There could be a dozen reasons for that. One of those reasons could be the fact that the daily carried unflattering news reports about the Mamata government despite the fact that a key office bearer of the daily’s management is Abhishek’s close friend and lawyer.

A history of friction 

It is not as if questions about their relationship were not already up in the air. There is a decade-old history of the aunt once promoting the nephew and then, equally publicly, giving him the snub. Back in 2012, a year after she became chief minister, she launched a wing called TMC Yuva, purportedly to draw urban youth to the party, and made Abhishek its head. TMC Yuva was seen as a clear encroachment on his territory by Suvendu Adhikari, then head of TMC Youth and one of Mamata’s closest aides and now BJP rival. Yuva and Youth were later merged with Abhishek at the helm. It was the beginning of the end of Adhikari’s time in TMC and the rise and rise of Abhishek.

But it seems to have also been the beginning of a rocky roller coaster ride. Soon after the Youth-Yuva fiasco, she chided newcomers in the party at a massive party gathering that filled Kolkata’s Netaji Indoor Stadium and asked them to behave respectfully to the veterans. In 2016, the day Mamata was sworn in for the second time as CM at an event on the arterial Red Road in Kolkata instead of Raj Bhavan, Abhishek was absent. But at the outermost boundary of the fenced off road, I remember spotting a couple of small vans stacked with posters, which a handful of youth held up. The posters read, “Real match winner Abhishek Banerjee”.

In 2019, after the setback in the Parliamentary polls for TMC, it was Abhishek who convinced Mamata to rope in Prashant Kishor. In 2021, the day Assembly votes were counted, there were only two people on stage with Mamata at her press conference: Kishor and Abhishek. Since then, barring a couple of bouts of petulance, Abhishek has made his presence felt in the party. In 2024, it culminated into a 7 lakh vote victory margin from constituency Diamond Harbour.

In between elections, Mamata has never made a secret of the fact that she dotes on Abhishek’s children. One Christmas, she shared the most charming videos of taking her granddaughter to church for midnight mass. And when CBI raided Abhishek’s home in connection with a coal scam in February 2021, she rushed to his house and spent time with the family. When she left for office, her granddaughter escorted her to the car. The happy family picture was complete.

Immediately after the 2024 election results were out, Abhishek was sent to the INDIA meet in Delhi. After attending the Rahul Gandhi-led meeting, he went straight to Mumbai to meet the Thackerays, clearly positioned by Mamata as her envoy and representative in central politics.

But again came the chill.

‘What chill?’, a section of the party will say dismissively— ‘They are different generations, different people with different styles of functioning.’ ‘There are bound to be differences but nothing that can’t be fixed.’ ‘Everyone accepts Mamata is boss and that Abhishek will follow in her footsteps.’ Their mantra is “Mamata and Abhishek are not photocopies of each other. We have the best 1-2 team of any party in the country”. For their own sake, TMC leaders and workers and, of course the 1-2 team, need to keep their fingers crossed.

Monideepa Banerjie is a senior journalist based in Kolkata. She tweets @Monideepa62. Views are personal.

(Edited by Theres Sudeep)