Mamata loyalist MLA Madan Mitra joins TMC rebel camp, says no link to ED summons

TRinamool united states congress chairperson Mamata Banerjee’s come together auxiliary, Kamarhati legislator Madan Mitra, crossed o'er to the renegade camp led by Ritabrata Banerjee on Wednesday, blaming the party’s national general secretary, Abhishek Banerjee, for the current internal crisis.“From this moment, I resign from the national working committee, the post of chief whip in the assembly and the post of general secretary of Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress. I was in the Trinamool Congress and I remain there. I am only changing rooms,” Mitra said after joining the rebel group at Ritabrata Banerjee’s room in the state assembly in the presence of other rebel MLAs.Mitra, who has been with Mamata Banerjee since 1998 when the party was founded, left the Mamata Banerjee-led faction a day after the Enforcement Directorate sent summons to his wife and two sons for questioning regarding alleged corruption in recruitment by the Kamarhati municipality. They have been asked to appear at the ED office on July 21 and 22.The lawmaker had been arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation on December 12, 2014, in the Saradha chit fund case and released on bail after 629 days. He was arrested again by the CBI in May 2021 in the 2014 Narada sting operation case on bribery charges.“My family has been summoned by a federal agency. My family will go and cooperate with the agency. But that is not linked to my joining (the rebels) today,” Mitra, who was also a minister in the TMC government, said.Ritabrata Banerjee said the rebel group’s collective effort to fight family-controlled politics within the party was strengthened by Mitra’s joining.“Ours is a collective fight against family-controlled politics. Our collective effort got stronger today. Mitra is a veteran,” he saidReciting a Bengali poem which says an aged man has to decide which bridge he can cross and which he cannot, Mitra squarely blamed TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee for the current state of the party, where more than 60 of 80 MLAs and 20 of 28 Lok Sabha MPs have left so far.“It is indeed sad that when history will be written, it will say that a party got ruined because of just one person,” Mitra said.“Abhishek wants the party to follow only his commands. He does not listen to anyone. Millions of our workers are helpless today. We have to take care of them. If the party is not taken care of right now, then we can never defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party. Abhishek can never defeat the BJP,” Mitra said.In February 2025, Mitra became the first whistleblower by raising corruption allegations within the TMC.He accused I-PAC (Indian Political Action Committee), the TMC’s election consultant, of tarnishing Mamata Banerjee’s image and raising money from party leaders seeking election tickets and plum posts. He told the media that Abhishek Banerjee, who played the key role in hiring I-PAC, is not as great a leader as his aunt.With Mitra’s exit, only a handful of leaders, including Lok Sabha members Saugata Roy and Mahua Moitra and Rajya Sabha members Dola Sen, Sagarika Ghoah and Derek O’Brien, remained in the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC till Wednesday.In May 2021, Mitra was arrested by the CBI alongside three other Mamata Banerjee loyalists - Firhad Hakim, then minister and Kolkata mayor, minister Subrata Mukherjee and former Kolkata mayor Sovan Chatterjee.Hakim joined the rebel camp in June after resigning as mayor. Chatterjee, who has left active politics, has not cleared his stand on the current crisis. Subrata Mukherjee died in 2021.“I thank Mamata Banerjee for staying beside us all these years,” Mitra said on Wednesday.The Mamata Banerjee camp hasn’t reacted to the development yet.