Mamata Banerjee has convened a congregation of her party ranks on Thursday where she is likely to convey a unity message and outline a road map for Trinamool leading to next year’s Assembly elections.

The event will also mark the Trinamool chief’s first public assertion of sole authority over the party since recently reclaiming its reins after a decade of delegating power to nephew and heir apparent Abhishek Banerjee.

“Barely a year remains before this perform-or-perish election. We are sure to win but there can be no complacency,” a senior Trinamool leader said.

“More important, we cannot let internal differences get in the way of the party’s victory. That will be the core message.”

The event will be an “expanded state conference of the party”, the leader said.

“It will take place from 11am at Netaji Indoor Stadium on February 27. It would have been held sooner had the budget session of the Assembly not come in the way,”
he added.

Abhishek, Trinamool national general secretary, visited Mamata at her home in the afternoon. Party sources said it was a “strategic huddle” before the conference.

Mamata has repeatedly asserted at Trinamool meetings since December that she and she alone would be running the party for at least another decade, dismissing any possibility of the so-called new guard led by Abhishek taking over.

“The conference will witness attacks on the BJP, its destruction of the nation and its attempted ‘invasion’ of Bengal. But the main takeaway will be that there is no ‘old guard’ or ‘new guard’ in Trinamool, just a united Team Mamata that will secure a fourth consecutive Assembly election win,” the senior leader said.

The leader, who claims equidistance from both lobbies in the “new vs old” squabbles that have been a chronic headache for the chief minister, added: “She (Mamata) will be the sole star of the show but he (Abhishek) will not give it a miss.

“There’s no indication yet of the possibility of a gesture of dissent from him — by way of a no-show or a video statement.”

A member of the Bengal cabinet said all tiers of the Trinamool hierarchy and elected representatives would attend the meeting, down to the block (rural) and ward
(urban) level.

“The responsibility has conspicuously been given to the old guard,” he said, referring to Trinamool state president Subrata Bakshi and senior ministers Firhad Hakim and Aroop Biswas.

“The trio got feverishly busy after she gave the call (for the conference). The three of them, and others, will conduct an important meeting on Monday evening to ensure all goes to plan,” the minister said.

With Mamata signalling her supremacy over the past few months, the remaining members of the old guard had gone about --- with her approval – dismantling power structures put in place by Abhishek loyalists.

“This exercise began after the national executive meeting at her residence last November. It will reach some sort of a culmination on Thursday,” a party insider said.

“The long-overdue internal reshuffles are likely to begin thereafter,” he added, alluding to possible changes in the urban units, for instance.

While Trinamool swept up 29 of Bengal’s 42 Lok Sabha seats last summer, it fared poorly in the vast majority of urban areas and trailed from 69 of the state’s 125 civic body areas.

Kumbh toll

The toll in a road accident near Jharkhand’s Dhanbad involving a group from Bengal travelling to the Mahakumbh on Saturday has risen to seven with the death of a 14-year-old boy.

A source said Sudip Saha, 14, who suffered a severe head injury, passed away at a Dhanbad hospital on Sunday. His parents and sister were also killed in the mishap, which occurred when the car they were travelling in hit a stationary truck from behind near Dhanbad’s Rajganj early on Saturday.

After chief minister Mamata Banerjee instructed officials to provide full support to the bereaved families, the West Midnapore district administration has arranged for an ambulance to bring the bodies back from Jharkhand.