The Ritabrata Banerjee-led rebel bloc that calls itself the “ashol (real)” Trinamool Congress is all set to meet chief election commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar in New Delhi in the first half of next week to formally stake claim to the party’s name, the twin-flower symbol and all institutional properties.
According to multiple sources, Uluberia Purba MLA Ritabrata is likely to present the case personally before the Election Commission.
Ritabrata, the leader of the Opposition in the Bengal Assembly, is likely to be accompanied by Entally MLA Sandipan Saha, Raghunathganj MLA Akhruzzaman, Sujapur MLA Sabina Yeasmin, Kasba MLA Javed Ahmed Khan and five others from the bloc.
While Sandipan, Sabina and Javed are deputy leaders of the Opposition, Akhruzzaman is the Opposition chief whip.
Besides Ritabrata, Sandipan and Akhruzzaman have been key players among over a dozen involved in the Calcutta-New Delhi rebel-management (Assembly and Parliament) games underway since the latter half of May.
“Yes, we are going to meet Gyanesh Kumar next week, as soon as we get an appointment. We formally requested it, and indications are we will receive it in the first half of the week. Ten of us will go and take part in the Nirvachan Sadan meeting,” said a source.
“To stake claim officially as ashol Trinamool using the Eknath Shinde procedure. But our case is far more bulletproof, as we learned from their mistakes. We have taken every possible precaution — with adequate legal and political counsel from experts in parliamentary procedure — so that there are no obstacles or setbacks,” the source told this newspaper.
“We have also been given to understand that this will be prioritised at Nirvachan Sadan.... This is going to Gyanesh Kumar after all.”
A crucial part of the properties is Trinamool’s “white money” war chest of at least ₹1,100 crore (estimates suggest it could exceed ₹1,600 crore).
The Assembly rebel faction, which has 65 MLAs now (Budge Budge MLA Ashok Deb is the latest Mamata Banerjee “loyalist” to purportedly switch camps), is intentionally avoiding the term ‘split’.
In their version of a national working committee meeting on Monday, Team Ritabrata removed Mamata Banerjee from the Trinamool chairperson post she had occupied since the party’s formation in 1998 and replaced her with Howrah Madhya MLA Arup Roy. The former chief minister was instead offered the role of a margdarshak.
The bloc on Tuesday met Bengal chief electoral officer Neelam Meena here and submitted to him documentary evidence of decisions made at Monday’s meeting.
Ritabrata rejected the premise that his group was a breakaway formation seeking to inherit someone else’s property. “Please remember, there is no need to ‘claim’ a symbol, for instance, that already belongs to us. We represent the constitutional continuity of the party,” he told this newspaper.
In Kalighat, the camp loyal to Mamata is relying heavily on constitutional jurisprudence to neutralise the legislative numbers. Their primary shield is the Supreme Court’s five-judge Constitution bench judgment in Subhash Desai v. principal secretary, governor of Maharashtra (2023). Born from the Shiv Sena split, the ruling clarified that a legislative majority cannot hijack a parent political party.
Voters, the court noted, back a candidate based on the reputation and general goodwill of the mother organisation, not the personal ambitions of an elected individual.
“We already informed Nirvachan Sadan via email (on Monday) who all are part of the Trinamool Congress national working committee, and that she (Mamata) is our chairperson,” said a Mamata loyalist.
“The commission will have to resolve the dispute under Paragraph 15 of the Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968 — a mechanism explicitly validated by the Supreme Court in the landmark 1971 Sadiq Ali case. The commission is bound to implement a strict, two-pronged test to evaluate the organisational and legislative wings of the party to verify where the real balance of power lies,” he said.
If the results reveal a vertical split with no clear majority in the organisational wing, the commission is empowered to freeze the twin-flower symbol entirely.
“Both sides would then be forced to contest future elections under new names, prefixed variations, and entirely new symbols,” he added. “The commission would have no say on the properties. For that, we go to the Supreme Court.”