Mamata accuses BJP of trying to split TMC, just handful of leaders join sit-in

KOlkata: Trinamool us congress (TMC) chairperson Mamata Banerjee on tues accused the Bharatiya Janata company (BJP) of attempting to make a stock split in her party by pressuring all 80 legislators, as her first public demonstration since the assembly election defeat drew only a handful of sitting MPs and MLAs amid signs of growing dissent within the party.Addressing a two-hour protest at Esplanade against alleged post-poll violence and eviction of hawkers, Banerjee claimed that the BJP was using police and central agencies to lure TMC legislators into breaking away.“You (the BJP) had split the ruling party in Maharashtra. You are doing the same here. Police are telling TMC MLAs to form a new party. Police are going to the homes of MLAs facing corruption charges and threatening them with federal agency investigations. Is this democracy?” Banerjee said, without naming the Shiv Sena which suffered a split in 2022.Amid reports that Ritabrata Banerjee and Sandipan Saha, the two expelled MLAs, were meeting others to engineer a split in the TMC, only nine sitting MPs and MLAs attended the demonstration. Several former ministers and MLAs once considered close to Banerjee stayed away.“I met Rathin Ghosh (the Madhyamgram MLA) today to inquire about his health. I don’t know what the other MLAs are doing,” said Ritabrata, who had met two MLAs, Siuli Saha from Kespur and Javed Ahmed Khan from Kasba, at Kolkata’s MLA Hostel on Monday night. While Khan did not speak to the media, Saha said, “I went to the hostel only to check the new room allotted to me.”A senior TMC leader, requesting anonymity, claimed that more than 50 legislators had expressed support for a breakaway faction. “To escape action under the anti-defection law, 52 MLAs have to sign a letter to the assembly speaker. Although the number of TMC MLAs has dropped to 78 after the two expulsions, at least 57 have consented to split the party. Mamata Banerjee may lose the party symbol,” the leader said.“The signs were evident when only 69 of 80 MLAs attended the first legislative party meeting on May 6. The number came down to 64 on May 19 and only 19 on May 31,” the leader added.Seeking to contain the crisis, TMC state general secretary and Beliaghata MLA Kunal Ghosh appealed to party legislators not to desert the leadership. “I appeal to our MLAs with folded hands not to follow Ritabrata Banerjee. Don’t forget that you won on the TMC symbol. You must stay with the party at this hour,” he said. He later fell ill due to heat and exhaustion during the demonstration.The two MLAs were expelled on Monday minutes after chief minister Suvendu Adhikari said a written complaint by them led to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) probe into the forgery of signatures of some of the party’s MLAs in a May 19 resolution letter nominating Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay as the assembly’s leader of the opposition (LoP).On Tuesday, Ghosh went to the assembly with a letter from TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee urging speaker Rathindra Bose to declare 82-year-old Chattopadhyay the LoP.“The speaker did not come to the assembly today and his secretariat refused to accept the letter. So, I left it on the secretary’s table and left,” Ghosh said.Besides 78 MLAs (after the two expulsions), TMC has 29 Lok Sabha members and 13 Rajya Sabha members.Dismissing Banerjee’s allegations, BJP state president Samik Bhattacharya said,“TMC is collapsing due to its own actions. I predicted long before the elections that it would cease to exist because people rejected it,” he said.Reacting to the turnout at the demonstration, Adhikari said: “Only three MPs and six MLAs turned up. And there were more journalists than people in the audience.”At the protest, Banerjee vowed to continue her political fight. “Power is like a piece of paper to me. I believe in the people and my workers. We will fight back. I am a free bird now. I can go anywhere and start agitations whenever I please,” she said.Senior Congress and CPI(M) leaders held Mamata responsible for the TMC’s unprecedented crisis. “She has been paid back in her own coin. The erosion in TMC, the wranglings in the ranks started the moment it was defeated. I predicted this long ago but even many Congress leaders in Delhi thought I had some personal grudge against Mamata Banerjee. It was never the case. I always opposed her because I saw how she destroyed my party in Bengal,” senior Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said.The TMC defeated the Left Front government in 2011 by contesting with Congress as its ally. The Congress walked out of the coalition government in September 2012 when Banerjee withdrew her party’s support from the Congress-led UPA government, citing its economic policies. By then, TMC had persuaded many Bengal Congress MLAs to join it.Bengal CPI(M) secretary Md Salim said, “What goes around comes around. What Mamata Banerjee did in the past was scripted by the saffron camp. TMC wanted an opposition-less Bengal. What Mamata or Abhishek Banerjee did to make MPs and MLAs from other parties defect was an exercise to kill democracy.”EOM