Even before a month had passed since the May 4 results, Bengal’s political landscape was already shifting on its axis. The shattering of Mamata Banerjee’s 15-year hegemony last month had been dramatic enough. What crystallised on Wednesday afternoon was something else entirely.
At least 58 of Trinamool Congress’s 80 MLAs broke ranks, claiming recognition as the legitimate legislature party. The rebel faction had secured well beyond the two-thirds threshold required to insulate themselves from the anti-defection law — leaving 30B Harish Chatterjee Street — Mamata’s residence and the nerve-centre of Bengal’s power over the last 15 years — politically stranded.
It is tempting to compare it to the “Eknath Shinde model” the BJP used in Maharashtra to topple the alliance in power there. But what’s transpiring in Bengal is significantly different as the BJP is deploying a similar model against an Opposition party in a state where the BJP is already in power.
In their letter to Assembly Speaker Rathindra Bose, the TMC rebels acknowledged Mamata as their chairperson. But they attached a rider — prodhan poramorshodata, or principal adviser — that amounted to a supremely humiliating demotion for the 71-year-old supreme leader whose word, as recently as this summer, had been absolute law. She found herself cornered into the polite vanaprastha of a political margdarshak: no longer an active commander, but a living monument.
The coup de grâce was delivered not from the Treasury benches, but from within her own depleted ranks. In a breathless sequence of events, Speaker Bose — fresh from a Delhi trip where he met figures ranging from Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla to Prime Minister Narendra Modi — granted official Opposition status to the breakaway faction. By afternoon, the Assembly secretariat had handed over the keys to the leader of the Opposition’s chamber: keys that had until now been withheld from Mamata’s nominee, the veteran Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay.
The man holding those keys was Ritabrata Banerjee — 47 years old, former Marxist protégé of then Left Front chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, once expelled from the CPM, and summarily expelled from Trinamool just days earlier.
“Let Mamata Banerjee remain as our prodhan poramorshodata,” a composed Ritabrata announced at a packed Assembly news conference, seated beside his four newly designated deputies: Javed Ahmed Khan, Sabina Yeasmin, Seuli Saha and Sandipan Saha. Akhruzzaman, the former junior power minister who retained his Raghunathganj seat in the recent elections, was named chief whip.
Ritabrata did not denounce his former chief. He delivered a velvet-gloved eviction notice. “She remains our leader,” he said. As for Abhishek Banerjee — Mamata’s nephew, heir apparent, and the man reportedly instrumental in Ritabrata’s own induction into Trinamool — the dismissal was clinical: “He has no distant connection with this 18th Assembly.”
The rebellion had been building since the weekend, allegedly with assistance from powerbrokers in both Delhi and Calcutta. Ritabrata’s principal comrade-in-arms was Entally MLA Sandipan, also 47, who embodies the sharper, more impatient energy of a newer legislative generation.
The fuse, when it came, was lit by a clumsy bureaucratic error. When Trinamool’s national general secretary Abhishek submitted a proposal to the Speaker nominating Sobhandeb, the 82-year-old MLA from Ballygunge, as Opposition leader, the paperwork was treated as a formality. Ritabrata and Sandipan saw it differently. They seized on the document and exposed what they alleged were wholesale forgeries of MLA signatures. A Hare Street FIR, a rapid-fire CID inquiry, and an internal dam burst followed in quick succession.
Constitutionally, the Speaker’s recognition of the breakaway group raises significant questions about the boundaries of legislative discretion and the anti-defection provisions of the Tenth Schedule — questions that will almost certainly be tested in court.
Former Lok Sabha secretary-general P.D.T. Acharya criticised the Bengal Assembly Speaker’s move to recognise Ritabrata as the leader of the Opposition, calling it a “wrong decision” and alleging that the Speaker had exceeded his constitutional authority.
“The Speaker is not the authority to decide which faction represents the real party. That authority rests with the Election Commission. Until the issue of which faction is the real Trinamool Congress is settled by the Election Commission, the Speaker cannot entertain any such claim,” Acharya told The Telegraph. “That is a wrong decision,” he added.
Acharya argued that despite the rebellion by a section of Trinamool legislators, Mamata continues to be the party chief and that the Speaker was duty-bound to take cognisance of any complaint lodged by her.
Acharya said: “The legislature party is only a wing of the original political party. The chief of the original party, Mamata Banerjee, has the legal authority, and the Speaker must take cognisance if she raises objections to the actions of a section of the party’s MLAs.”
While Ritabrata held court in the Assembly, Mamata was closeted at her Kalighat home with Abhishek, Kunal Ghosh and Chandrima Bhattacharya — hours after she had dissolved all committees of the party and its frontal organisations.
The final seal was stamped by chief minister Suvendu Adhikari himself. A former Mamata protégé who crossed over to the BJP after being passed over in the succession plan in favour of Abhishek, Suvendu arrived at the Assembly from a Nabanna administrative meeting and walked into Speaker Bose’s chamber. Shortly after, the doors to the Opposition leader’s room swung open for Ritabrata.
“We will play the role of a responsible, positive Opposition,” Ritabrata declared. “The people of Bengal voted us into the Opposition benches. We accept that. I am not a ‘boss’. We will fight the government eye-to-eye on mistakes, but we will support all that is good.”
By killing with kindness, Ritabrata and his calculating cohort have executed the neatest trick in modern legislative warfare: they have marooned the high command without firing a single unparliamentary bullet.
Mamata remains on her pedestal. But it has been moved into an alcove labelled prodhan poramorshodata. Five decades of political ascent did not end with a roaring rally or a dramatic walkout. It ended with the quiet turn of a brass key in an Assembly padlock — the legacy nominally intact, the power gone.
Additional reporting by J.P. Yadav in New Delhi