The engineers of the Trinamool rebellion found themselves grappling with the threat of a counter-rebellion as early as Day 2.
About a dozen-odd breakaway MLAs on Thursday signalled a rethink, some of them telling The Telegraph their understanding had been that Mamata Banerjee would remain their leader, and asserting they would not accept Ritabrata Banerjee as the alternative.
They did not clarify how they had expected Mamata to lead a revolt against herself.
Sources attributed the development to back-channel pressure on many of the rebels from Mamata and her lieutenants.
“When we signed (Wednesday’s letter), we did so with Mamata Banerjee as our supreme leader,” Gulsan Mullick, MLA from Panchla in Howrah, told this newspaper.
These dozen-odd MLAs were among the 58 who had signed a letter presented to Speaker Rathindra Bose on Wednesday declaring themselves the real Trinamool and seeking the leader of the Opposition’s (LoP) post for Ritabrata.
Thrilled by the irony of one Banerjee (Ritabrata) stymieing another (Mamata), a BJP old-timer had joked: “Respect our Bengal ingenuity. Don’t call it the ‘Shinde model’ or ‘Chadha model’, it’s the ‘Banerjee model’.”
A gloating Ritabrata, 47, later said, perhaps in mockery, that Mamata would remain the group’s “prodhan poramorshodata” or principal adviser.
But Mullick said: “A leader is a completely different thing, the supreme — what everyone calls a guardian. ‘Prodhan poramorshodata’ means someone who assists from the outside, superficially.”
He delivered an ultimatum: “If Mamata Banerjee is not kept as the supreme leader, we will have to rethink this whole thing.”
What did he mean by that?
“That’s for you to figure out,” he said.
Sources said Sitai MLA Sangita Roy was another of those having a rethink.
Speaker Bose, though, had words of encouragement for Ritabrata, saying his expulsion by Trinamool (before the split) was “absolutely not legal” as no show-cause notice had been served on him.
“Moreover, there were adequate MLAs in support of Ritabrata. Therefore, I have taken my decision after weighing all aspects,” he told reporters in Delhi.
Some of those in Mullick’s camp suggested they feared that a “habitual turncoat” like Ritabrata might bring the Group of 58 too close to the saffron establishment.
“Why is he suddenly all-important now? It was a collective effort...,” said a rebel south Bengal MLA, who too had signed the letter to the Speaker that facilitated Ritabrata’s ascent to the post.
“Is he to be considered a chief ministerial candidate by a credible Opposition in the future? Then we are not part of that future. We did not get rid of Abhishek Banerjee’s highhandedness to replace it with a saffron-backed Ritabrata.”
Sources close to Ritabrata said he was “fully worry-free” and that this was a minor, predictable hiccup that would resolve itself.
“One simply cannot swim against the tide and win in this instance. They will say these things for a few days, and then inevitably fall in line. They know what they are up against,” one of them told this newspaper.
Mamata’s veteran political managers have launched an aggressive counter-poaching campaign, directly calling up vulnerable first-time and rural (mostly Muslim) MLAs from the rebel camp.
The callers are reminding the breakaway MLAs of the legal uncertainty ahead — Trinamool is preparing to challenge the Speaker’s decisions in the Supreme Court — and the certainty of the immediate, street-level backlash waiting for them back home.
“She (Mamata) has personally spoken to several of them, making emotional appeals coupled with warnings of what might happen to them when she takes this to the Supreme Court and sees success,” a Trinamool insider said.
Mamata herself chose to project an air of detachment. She spent the day paying her respects before pictures and statues of the leaders of the freedom struggle and the “Bengal renaissance” and praying at the Kalighat temple.
One former party rebel threw a taunt at her.
“If Mamata Banerjee comes to me, I can send her to the Assembly from Rejinagar,” smirked Humayun Kabir, the AJUP founder who had only months ago spearheaded his own furious “Muslim mutiny” against her.