In what earlier seemed impossible, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) has split into fragments less than a month after its Assembly election loss.
While one side supports Ritabrata Banerjee as the Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the West Bengal Assembly, the other looks at Sobhadeb Chattopadhyay for the post.
On Wednesday, the West Bengal Assembly Speaker Rathindra Bose accepted a resolution signed by 60 MLA’s along with the minutes of the meeting.
This led to Ritabrata Banerjee officially being named the LoP with a two-thirds majority of the TMC MLAs behind him.
Javed Khan, Sandipan Saha, Sabina Yasmin, and Seuli Saha have been appointed as the deputy leaders of the TMC in the Assembly.
“We are the real principal Opposition here,” Ritabrata Banerjee told the media.
“This is a collective decision. We will function as a collective team. Our fight is collective, we are against individualism.”
Ritabrata and other MLAs were in unison that their "chief advisor" should be Mamata Banerjee.
“I appeal to Mamata Banerjee to be our chief advisor. We will be able to fulfil the role of the Opposition to the best of our ability,” he said, adding that the MLAs would write to the TMC supremo.
The mandate is clear: the 60 MLAs are against Abhishek Banerjee, who had signed a document with 80 winning TMC MLAs' signatures, naming Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay as the LoP.
“Abhishek Banerjee has no connection with our legislative party,” said Ritabrata Banerjee, going a step ahead to criticise the party's national general secretary for calling him a thief, and declaring that he wouldn’t have gone into hiding for 26 days.
The new LoP also thanked CM Suvendu Adhikari for calling Opposition MLAs for the administrative meeting and appealed to him to include the Opposition in future meetings as well.
The new LoP also pointed out that the MLAs would praise the government for initiatives like the monthly monetary welfare scheme for women, Annapurna Bhandar, which began on the same day, but would not hesitate to criticise the government if the need arose.
He added that the MLAs would not walk out of the Assembly to reduce their numbers and give advantage to the ruling BJP government.
Whether Mamata Banerjee accepts the proposal by Ritabrata and other MLAs is uncertain, as it bypasses any involvement of Abhishek Banerjee.
Coming at a time when the TMC has decided to dissolve all its frontal organisations, introspect, and rebuild, there is much more that the party needs to re-evaluate.
