Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday moved Calcutta High Court, challenging Suvendu Adhikari’s Bhabanipur win against her this time.
Mamata had done the same five years ago for the Nandigram results — the crucial difference being she was the chief minister then, while he is the chief minister now.
The 71-year-old former chief minister arrived at the high court premises around 2pm suddenly. Sources said this visit was kept secret till her arrival because she was heckled by a section of “BJP-mobilised” lawyers there during her May 14 appearance.
Accompanied by remaining loyalists like Sreerampur MP (and her lawyer) Kalyan Banerjee, and Rajya Sabha members Derek O’Brien and Dola Sen, Mamata signed a mandatory affidavit to officially contest the Bhabanipur Assembly seat’s result, where her former protege Suvendu defeated her by 15,105 votes.
History suggests this legal offensive could face a slow grind. She filed a near-identical petition in May 2021, after Suvendu edged her out of Nandigram by 1,956 votes. The Nandigram case has not had a substantial hearing since December 2021. That time, Mamata lost the seat but delivered a sweep and a third consecutive Trinamool Congress government. This time, however, she lost the state as well as the
Bhabanipur seat.
“Ask Kalyan,” she said on her way out after journalists asked her to issue a statement.
The new Bhabanipur petition duplicates the old ammunition, invoking Section 123 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, to allege a systematic operation involving bribery and technical discrepancies during counting. Kalyan later openly spearheaded the political charge: “The conspiracy is obvious.”
“The immediate elevation of the Election Commission’s observer Subrata Gupta to chief adviser to the chief minister, and of chief electoral officer Manoj Kumar Agarwal to chief secretary, along with other rapid reassignments of top-tier bureaucratic portfolios show how deeply compromised they all were,” he said.
Before the elections, Mamata repeatedly blamed the “conspiratorial” removal of 55,000 voters (23 per cent of them Muslims) from her constituency during the SIR. On May 4, the day of counting, she alleged widespread counting “loot”. Of Bhabanipur’s 267 polling booths, Suvendu gained leads from a staggering 206 booths, leaving Mamata clinging to small pockets with leads from just 60.
Ritabrata case
A separate high-stakes legal battle, also initiated by Mamata, was heard before Justice Krishna Rao. Additional advocate-general Bilwadal Bhattacharyya appeared on behalf of Speaker Rathindra Bose and the Assembly secretary to defend the disputed appointment of TMC’s Assembly rebel bloc chief Ritabrata Banerjee as the leader of the Opposition when the party’s official choice was Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay.
Justice Rao repeatedly asked the state’s legal team why Speaker Bose bypassed the initial letter from TMC’s Abhishek Banerjee — now under police and CID investigation for alleged fake signatures of MLAs — to ratify a second list of 58 members led by Ritabrata, claiming a two-thirds majority.
“Show me the law,” Justice Rao demanded. “From which provision does the Speaker derive this power?”
Bhattacharyya failed to produce the statutory backing. The hearing will continue on Wednesday.
Rachna’s desertion
The political haemorrhage paralysing Mamata’s parliamentary party continued in Delhi with the cinematic betrayal by Hooghly MP Rachna Banerjee, yet another face of Mamata’s beloved entertainment brigade. Rachana said things similar to fellow Tollywood rebel, Ghatal MP Deepak Adhikari aka Dev.
Returning from purported a foreign trip, Rachna, 53, visited the Lok Sabha secretariat to sign the paperwork to be formally recognised as one of the Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI), which the rebel bloc has decided to become part of.
“I have an old relationship with Didi. That relationship will forever remain intact. Nobody can change that. Everyone says ‘Trinamool is Didi’, and that is entirely correct. People vote seeing her,” said Rachna.
“But people elected me not because I am a film star, but to work for them. That work had not been done in the 15 years (of the Mamata regime). We need the support of the Centre to work. That is very important,” she claimed, meeting the BJP’s rebel managers Bhupender Yadav and Nishikant Dubey during the day.
Kakoli vs Sudip
Adding newer dimensions to this soap opera, sources in the rebel bloc said Barasat MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar — having done all the heavy lifting by leading this rebellion from conceptualisation to execution — was “displeased, to say the least” with her being upstaged by eleventh-hour recruit, Kolkata Uttar MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay.
“He got on board at the very final stage, once Kakolidi’s leadership had eliminated all risks and mitigated all challenges. Now, suddenly, Sudipda is the voice and face of the bloc, issuing all statements in media appearances, talking directly to the BJP high command, and whatnot,” said a source. “Now there is even talk of this bloc being given a cabinet ministry and a minister of state berth, and Kakolidi finds herself in contention for neither.”
Speaker invite
At the Assembly, Speaker Rathindra Bose invited the Ritabrata-led TMC faction to attend the all-party meeting ahead of the budget session, which begins with governor R.N. Ravi’s address on Thursday. No invite was sent to Mamata loyalists such as Ballygunge MLA Sobhandeb or Beleghata MLA Kunal Ghosh.
