Phone calls, prayers, and a Kalighat meeting: Mamata fights to keep TMC hers

TRinamool us congress father Mamata Banerjee has launched a personal outreach to renegade and wavering legislators, and summoned a get together at her Kalighat abode in Kolkata for today, in an effort to halt further defections and hold together a party confronting the first split in its 28-year history.Hit by an implosion after the BJP ended her 15-year-rule in Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, 71, has over the past two days telephoned several MLAs from Howrah, Murshidabad and North Dinajpur, party sources told news agency PTI. Many of them were seen at meetings of the rebel camp led by expelled legislator Ritabrata Banerjee,The Ritabrata camp seized control of the TMC's legislature party on Wednesday after 58 of the party's 80 MLAs backed his installation as Leader of the Opposition, a claim accepted by assembly speaker Rathindra Bose.“She is speaking to legislators individually and asking them to attend a meeting at Kalighat on Friday. The effort is to keep communication channels open and explore the possibility of reconciliation,” a senior TMC leader told PTI.The meeting is widely seen as a test of Banerjee's continuing hold over legislators who have crossed over, with attendance figures the key indicator.Split may go beyond assemblyThe bleed she is trying to stem extends well beyond the assembly. More than 100 municipal councillors have resigned from the party, along with leaders including former transport minister Snehasish Chakraborty, who quit on Wednesday.The outreach is not confined to the assembly either.The TMC has 28 members in the Lok Sabha and 13 in the Rajya Sabha, and the leadership fears the revolt could spread to its parliamentary ranks.At least two trusted MPs — one each from the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha — have been tasked with contacting parliamentary colleagues and dissuading them from joining the "new Trinamool" the rebels say they are building, multiple reports have said.The anxiety was underlined on Friday by veteran Rajya Sabha MP Sukhendu Sekhar Roy, who told a television channel that a reaction similar to the assembly revolt was "likely in the Lok Sabha too", and warned the party could “disintegrate and cease to exist”. Roy said he remained in the party only formally.Ritabrata Banerjee, however, said he had not spoken to any MPs in seven days, according to ANI.Senior loyalists have rallied behind the TMC chief. Lok Sabha MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay dismissed the rebels, telling PTI that those deserting her had "no political locus standi without her". MP Sougata Roy told the agency the BJP might attempt an operation in the party's parliamentary units as it had in the assembly, but added that Banerjee "has fought bigger battles and will bounce back".Abhishek a factorMamata Banerjee's task is complicated by the rebels' own framing of the revolt. The 58 MLAs have maintained that their fight is not against her but against the growing influence of her nephew and former national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee.A day after the takeover of the legsilative party, several rebel legislators insisted she remain the party's supreme leader rather than be reduced to an adviser. "We want the party to function under her leadership," rebel MLA Gulshan Mullick told reporters.The crisis has unfolded a month after the TMC lost power in West Bengal to the BJP, which won 207 of the 294 assembly seats to the TMC's 80 and formed the state's first BJP government under CM Suvendu Adhikari, himself a former TMC leader, on May 9. The TMC took 40.8% of the vote to the BJP's 45.84% — a far narrower gap than the seat tally suggested. This pointed to a consolidation of Hindu votes behind the BJP, HT has reported.The TMC split was triggered by allegations that the signatures of several MLAs were forged on a letter proposing Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay as Leader of Opposition — a matter now under CID investigation.On Thursday, Banerjee also visited the Kalighat temple and offered prayers. For the leader who founded the TMC in 1998 and led it for nearly three decades, the immediate battle is no longer over power but over preserving the organisation she built and preventing its further fragmentation.