In a dramatic turn of events on Monday, rebels in Trinamool Congress “removed” Mamata Banerjee as chief and elected senior West Bengal lawmaker Arup Roy in her place.
Led by Ritabrata Banerjee in the state, the dissident camp declared a parallel power structure and will next move the Election Commission to stake claim to the TMC symbol.
The declaration followed what rebels described as a special TMC session called at a hotel in Kolkata where over 500 party leaders attended. These included former and sitting MLAs and TMC councillors also.
A new leadership was created at the session where the rebels claimed they had removed both Mamata Banerjee and her nephew Abhishek Banerjee from their posts. Abhishek is TMC national general secretary.
The session pictures shared widely showed TMC’s twin-flower symbol displayed across the venue alongside images of Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Kazi Nazrul Islam and BR Ambedkar. Mamata Banerjee was absent and Ritabrata Banerjee addressed the gathering saying TMC was facing a “constitutional crisis”.
“Article 20 of the TMC constitution requires the formation of a national working committee every three years. The last national working committee was constituted on February 12, 2022 and its tenure ended on February 11 this year. Since no fresh committee was formed thereafter, it has become necessary to reconstitute the party’s organisational structure,” said Ritabrata Banerjee.
Events unfolded with the formation of the national working committee consisting of Arup Roy, one time Mamata aide and TMC’s minority heavyweight Firhad Hakim, Aroop Biswas, Biplab Mitra, Akhruzzaman Ansari, Sabina Yasmin, Sandipan Saha, Rathin Ghosh, Javed Khan and Ritabrata Banerjee, among others.
Roy, the Howrah Central MLA was named TMC chief by a voice vote.
