Kolkata: The Congress West Bengal unit was caught by surprise after All India Congress Committee (AICC) state in-charge Ghulam Ahmed Mir referred to Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury as the former West Bengal Congress president, with leaders present at the meeting, including Adhir, learning for the first time that the AICC had accepted his resignation.
In their first meeting after Lok Sabha polls, nearly 20 Bengal Congress leaders were in a huddle with Congress general-secretary KC Venugopal at the party headquarters in New Delhi late Monday evening to decide who would take charge as president of the West Bengal Congress after Adhir.
Senior Congress leaders told ThePrint that Adhir had stepped down from his post soon after the Lok Sabha elections, taking responsibility for the Congress’s debacle in West Bengal, in which it won just one seat, compared to two in 2019. However, Chowdhury did not publicly confirm the news at the time because there was no response to his resignation letter from the AICC.
In the Lok Sabha elections — in which the Congress challenged Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) by joining hands with the Communist Party of India (Marxist) — five-time MP Adhir himself lost from Bahrampur to the TMC candidate, cricketer Yusuf Pathan, by a margin of 85,022 votes.
Speaking to ANI, Chowdhury described what had taken place at Monday’s meeting. “I was aware that the meeting had been called under my presidency and I was still the West Bengal Congress president, but during the meeting, GA Mir during his address said that the former president is also here. That is how I learnt that I had become former president (of West Bengal Congress).”
Adhir said he was upset with Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s comments about him in a television interview during the Lok Sabha elections. “While the election was underway, Mallikarjun Kharge said on television that if necessary I would be kept out, which made me upset. The election results were also not good for the party in West Bengal. Even though I was the temporary party president, it was my responsibility. After which I told Kharge ji that if possible, you can replace me with someone else,” he said.
Other leaders present at the meeting also shared their surprise at learning of Adhir’s resignation.
“In fact, Mir repeated himself twice as there was pin-drop silence, then each of us was asked to meet Mr Venugopal one-on-one”, a leader present at the meeting told ThePrint. In the meeting, they were asked to share their opinion on who should be appointed the next West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee (WBPCC) president.
“Each leader spent some time speaking to Mr Venugopal. Adhir Ranjan went second and left from K.C. Venugopal’s room in two minutes, and also exited the meeting while all the leaders stayed back till the end,” added the leader.
“There are many front-runners; many have even nominated themselves as candidates for the post since there was no bar on the number of names or persons,” said another leader present at the meeting. Venugopal has assured the Bengal state unit that a name will be announced soon.
ThePrint has learnt that during Monday’s long discussions that ended well past 8pm, the West Bengal Congress leaders called for a fight against the TMC, keeping the 2026 Vidhan Sabha elections in mind. “We were very clear when we spoke to K.C. Venugopal that we want one clear policy in Bengal against the TMC because in Delhi the picture is different from that in Bengal. Almost everyone raised their voice against the TMC,” a leader told ThePrint.
State Congress leaders highlighted two recent incidents of violence in West Bengal, raising the issue of a party worker who was killed by a mob in Jalpaiguri district and a young Congress worker who was allegedly hacked to death in Malda district after the Lok Sabha results. In both cases, they blamed the TMC.
Along with senior state Congress leaders, those leaders present at the meeting included newly elected Congress MP Isha Khan Choudhury, Congress leader Deepa Das Munshi, former MP Pradip Bhattacharya, former Congress MLA Nepal Mahata, leader Rohan Mitra, and Chhatra Parishad (student wing) leader Sourav Prosad.
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‘Anti-TMC didn’t pay off’
Chowdhury had been the state Congress president since 2014. Under his command, in 2016, the Congress and the CPI(M) fought the Vidhan Sabha polls together against the TMC for the first time.
Ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Chowdhury was among the state party leaders who opposed an alliance in the state with the TMC. The TMC, which is a member of the INDIA bloc alongside the Congress, announced that it would contest all seats in the state on its own, eventually emerging victorious in 29 of the 42 seats it contested. The Congress allied with the Left Front, contesting in 9 seats together.
While the Left failed to win any seats, the Congress won only one seat in the stronghold of Malda South, where Isha Khan Choudhury defeated the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Sreerupa Mitra Chowdhury with a margin of 1.28 lakh votes. In total, the CPI(M) secured only 6 percent of the votes and the Congress about 5 percent, leading to some Left Front parties — the All India Forward Bloc and Revolutionary Socialist Party — resolving against any future alliance with the Congress.
Political analyst Udayan Bandopadhyay said Chowdhury’s anti-TMC stance did not pay off. “The crux of the matter is, Adhir Chowdhury has not been successful as an anti-TMC Congress leader. Rather, his skills have often energised the BJP leadership in West Bengal. So, with or without Adhir Chowdhury, the Congress has nothing to lose. I think that if the state Congress falls in line with the national one, the dismal situation shall improve. Otherwise, only a change of guard means nothing,” he told ThePrint.
The CPI(M) and the TMC are closely watching the developments at the Congress’s national headquarters. CPI(M) leader Sujan Chakraborty said he hopes the Congress high command will pay heed to the “need of the hour”.
“The Congress is a national party. While it is fighting the BJP at the Centre, it needs to continue its fight here in Bengal against both the BJP and TMC, hope the Congress High Command gives attention to this point,” he said.
But for the TMC, the ruling party in the state, the Congress is “irrelevant” and it needs to rethink its party line, said party leader Kunal Ghosh. Speaking to ThePrint, Ghosh said, “The Congress has become irrelevant, and Adhir Chowdhury failed to fight the TMC. The people of Bengal understood their motive to help the BJP and rejected them. On the one hand, the TMC defeated the BJP, the Congress and the CPI(M), while the Congress even with the CPI(M) failed to put up a satisfactory performance.”
According to Trinamool leaders, the Congress joining hands with the CPI(M) to fight elections against the chief minister’s party is “unacceptable” and it could only change if the party reverses its stand of fighting against the TMC.
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)
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