'Tis the season of raincoats and turncoats in West Bengal. In the wake of the biggest rebellion the Trinamool Congress (TMC) has seen since its inception, senior party leader Kunal Ghosh stated, "The TMC is Mamata Banerjee, and without her, there is no party."
The brewing political strom was perhaps discernible in the sweltering heat of 2 June, when a haggard yet determined-looking Mamata met with hundreds of her followers gathered at Kolkata's Esplanade. The sit-in protest—her first since losing power to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)—was in response to the increasing attacks on her party workers and leaders, including the party's General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee, who was recently attacked with eggs and stones in Sonarpur.
The former Bengal Chief Minister asserted she "won't die" till she brought down the BJP. However, just a day later, Mamata was hit with the squall of rebellion that has splintered her party into two factions—the Mamata loyalists and the anti-Abhishek lobby—in a bid to wrest power out of the hands of both leaders.
Led by recently expelled first-time MLA Ritabrata Banerjee, who's now been named the Leader of Opposition (LoP), at least 58 rebel MLAs christened themselves as the "real" Trinamool legislature party. Ritabrata maintained that Mamata was their leader—and that he did not intend to split the party. However, he told reporters the party no longer belonged to her as it had been "hijacked by a corporate organisation led by Abhishek".
Even as the TMC's fate is still unclear, political experts point out to The Quint that the faction is likely to become a potential "second home" for Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari should he ever need an exit strategy from the BJP.
Though not all in Ritabrata's faction are Suvendu supporters, they are all anti-Abhishek, they opine.