The Kalighat assembly line from the soundstages of Tollygunge to Parliament’s green benches has finally been exposed for what it always was. Not a grand cultural alliance but a temporary shelter for opportunism.
For nearly two decades, Mamata Banerjee’s candidate lists would often mirror an exercise in celebrity casting, as would her political events, from campaign meetings to “Martyrs’ Day” rallies.
She seemed content to try and convert the appeal of celluloid into raw seat counts, despite the A-listers often proving liabilities, shirking their constituencies and legislative duties and mouthing political gaffes.
Wherever Mamata went, a few luminaries from her culture clan tagged along, happy to be close to power while Didi basked in their stardust.
Until the afternoon of May 4, when the harsh dawn of reality replaced the dim marquee lights of fantasy, and Didi found herself cast aside by her glitterati.
“Entertainers without ideology were always going to be fair weather friends,” an octogenarian Trinamool insider said. “Behind closed doors, her Tollywood lot and the intelligentsia she cultivated mocked her relentlessly over their single malt.”
Mamata’s Tollywood obsession dates back to her student days, which coincided with the golden age of Bengali cinema, the veteran said.
Yet, down the years, almost every one of her “star” imports either turned on Mamata the moment the political weather changed, or embarrassed her in other ways.
Mithun Chakraborty — once close to the Left — was pampered by the Trinamool government with endless VVIP treatment, including a Banga Bibhushan award and a Rajya Sabha seat.
He walked out on Mamata at the first sign of adversity, during the ponzi “scams”, and later joined the BJP campaign to unseat her, earning a Padma Bhushan and a Dadasaheb Phalke Award as rewards.
Mamata handpicked Deepak “Dev” Adhikari in 2014 as the crown jewel of her celebrity brigade and gave him complete executive freedom in Ghatal. But the tinsel superstar who styled himself a reluctant parliamentarian was all but gone to the BJP, handheld by Mithun, in 2024.
Didi went out of her way to meet every additional demand and keep him, despite Dev having little to show as a then two-term MP.
Last week, the actor allegedly signed the letter the breakaway MPs have prepared for the Speaker while professing lifelong “love” for Didi and, in the same breath, declaring “Suvenduda (Adhikari) is very dear to me”.
Sources said few betrayals had hurt Mamata as much as Dev’s.
Others have been more brutal. Four-term Birbhum MP and actor Satabdi Roy, who hosted a Delhi conclave for the rebels over tea, said she had gladly aligned with the NDA with “no pressure, no fear, no favour”. After all, she had to protect her “clean image”.
“She never did any work as an MP, and won piggybacking the toiling election machinery run by the likes of Anubrata Mondal, whom she openly despised,” a Mamata loyalist said.
“Dev was and is in the prime of his Tollywood career; but Satabdi was rehabilitated by Didi after the industry forgot her....”
One of the most stunning pirouettes came from actor Saayoni Ghosh, whom Mamata gave the high-profile Jadavpur parliamentary seat and appointed her party’s youth wing president.
Saayoni continued to support Mamata vociferously even after the electoral rout, pledging never to leave her. Now, as she joins the turncoats, she has been trying to avoid the media — hiding under a cap, mask and dark shades at Calcutta airport, and refusing to answer questions at Delhi airport.
Another actor and rebel bloc member, June Malia, was given the Medinipur Assembly seat in 2021 and the Medinipur Lok Sabha seat in 2024, superseding seasoned party colleagues. When intra-party critics questioned her non-performance, Mamata would take her side openly.
“Remember that conflict with (Salboni MLA Srikanta) Mahata because he openly criticised these Tollywood imports? Mamata made him apologise to June and others and issued a statement endorsing them,” recalled a West Midnapore leader close to Mahata, a former minister of state.
“She even said: ‘Apnara janen na, o ki boro bongsher meye (You have no idea, what an aristocratic family she hails from)’.”
In a widely circulated video clip, in August 2022, Mahata had famously said: “People (actors) like Dev, Sandhya Roy, Sayantika (Banerjee), June Malia, Nusrat (Jahan), Mimi (Chakraborty)… they are involved in looting. If these people are considered the party’s assets, we can’t function here.…”
Mahata added that all efforts to convince Mamata and party No. 2 Abhishek Banerjee had failed.
When Left-leaning actor Rudranil Ghosh switched affiliation to Trinamool, he was showered with appointments to prestigious cultural committees and state commissions. But he crossed over to the BJP in 2021 and became one of Mamata’s most vocal detractors.
Koel Mallik had gushed about the “opportunity to serve the people and the nation” after being given a Rajya Sabha nomination, disregarding many serious claimants, earlier this summer. She abruptly resigned her seat last week, having apparently joined the rebels.
“Forget what Mamata did for her or her husband (Tollywood producer Nispal Singh Rane), even her father (veteran actor Ranjit Mallik) benefited endlessly from Didi — from getting Banga Bibhushan-type awards to being made the Calcutta sheriff,” a Mamata loyalist said.
Yesteryear superstar Chiranjeet Chakraborty was fielded from the safe Barasat seat for three successive terms despite doing little work in the constituency. But he routinely caused massive headaches with sexist remarksand political bloopers — criticising the party’s methods or announcing his desire to quit right before crucial election cycles, thereby forcing personal interventions byMamata.
Hooghly MP Rachana Banerjee — Mamata had personally signalled her political debut by appearing on her TV show Didi No. 1 — quickly betrayed her complete lack of appetite for the organisational grind, mouthed serial gaffes and publicly insulted veterans like then Chunchura MLA Asit Mazumdar. Mamata backed Rachana.
“Had he not been arrested after the BJP came to power, Asitda would be utterly thrilled now to see Rachana’s betrayal,” a source close to him said.
The first cracks had appeared during the high-stakes 2021 Assembly elections, when Tollywood saw a mass migration to the saffron camp. Mamata retaliated by fielding a fresh crop. After the BJP got drubbed, many of the defectors returned to Trinamool.
Five turbulent years later, the sudden and seemingly absolute shift in power has triggered immediate, unvarnished panic across Bengal’s showbiz fraternity.
Singer Iman Chakraborty, a regular headliner at Mamata’s events, has declared herself a “forever fan” of state BJP president Samik Bhattacharya and suggested she had been pressured intosinging the Unnayaner Panchali campaign song for Trinamool.
Filmmaker Kaushik Ganguly and composer Indraadip Dasgupta rushed to meet the newly victorious Rudranil, the swiftness of their somersault leaving their “bhodrolok” audience gasping.
The hypocrisy “has been embodied by Parambrata Chatterjee, above all others”, laughed a BJP senior.
A great-nephew of legendary Leftist filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak and nephew of activist-author Mahasweta Devi, the “intellectual actor-filmmaker” Parambrata had carefully cultivated a “Left-liberal” image. He had participated in the “No Vote to BJP” campaign in 2021.
Param gradually integrated himself into the Trinamool ecosystem, accepted state honours like the Banga Bhushan, and campaigned for the party this election. Yet, immediately after May 4, he stunned everyone with an about-face.
At a highly publicised media session, he sat beside friend-turned-adversary-turned-friend Rudranil and claimed he had been “forced” to align with Mamata (who had attended his son’s first-rice ceremony) to protect his baby.
Mamata had cherry-picked Tollywood leading ladies Mimi and Nusrat for the 2019 general election. Their celebrity status helped counter the rising BJP wave but their tenures quickly alienated the party’s grassroots workers because of their high absenteeism, “optical errors” in public, and an apparent preference for film schedules over constituency demands.
When Abhishek assumed organisational control of Trinamool, he instituted a supposedly strict “performance-over-glamour” policy. Sidelined by internal factionalism, Mimi preemptively resigned her Jadavpur seat in early 2024.
Basirhat MP Nusrat was dropped unceremoniously because of abysmal ground reports and immense public backlash over her absence during the Sandeshkhali crisis.
Both Mimi and Nusrat got entangled in central agency investigations into financial fraud.
Locket Chatterjee — who has all but retired from acting, left Trinamool years ago, and stayed loyal to the BJP through thick and thin — delivered a stinging rebuke to the panicked scramblers.
“Wait a little before rushing your U-turns — unlike TMC, the BJP won’t get in the way of your livelihood,” she said.
Experts suggested Mamata’s penchant for basking in A-list glow was rooted in a deep sense of personal inadequacy.
“She wanted to be an artist herself. Her achievements as a political leader were never enough to satisfy her inner cravings,” political scientist Subhamoy Maitra said.
“She desperately wanted to be a writer, poet, painter, singer, perhaps even an actress — she wanted it all. Rooted in a deep-seated sense of having been left behind, this drive triggers a distinct form of lumpenisation.”
A psychology teacher at a premier city university attributed to Mamata a “pathologically hubristic” drive — the desperate, unquenchable thirst to transcend raw politics and be recognised as a polymath, a torchbearer of the so-called “Bengal Renaissance”.
Yet, tarring the “Tolly Brigade” alone is unfair, political scientist Biswanath Chakraborty said.
“Abhishek explicitly encouraged hardcore career politicians. Mamata promoted people from the glamour industry. Both sets have acted like rats fleeing a sinking ship,” he said.
“If hardcore politicians like Mala Roy or Firhad Hakim leave, too, how can we single out only Tollywood for such blame? In an ideology-starved party, it was power alone that kept them together. With power gone, they are all abandoning ship.”