Opinion | 15 Years In Power, A Month To Collapse: The Wild Unravelling Of Mamata Banerjee |
Jun 04, 2026 12:19 pm IST
Opinion | 15 Years In Power, A Month To Collapse: The Wild Unravelling Of Mamata Banerjee
Barely a month after elections, the Trinamool Congress's disintegration has unfolded with startling speed - and Mamata Banerjee seems unable to arrest it.
Sayantan Ghosh Sayantan Ghosh Columnist
Sayantan Ghosh Columnist
In the sweltering political heat of June 2026, just a month after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) delivered a landslide victory in the West Bengal Assembly elections by securing around 208 seats to the Trinamool Congress's (TMC) roughly 80, Mamata Banerjee's party finds itself on the precipice of disintegration. What was unimaginable before the May results has unfolded with startling speed, as 58 Trinamool MLAs have thrown their weight behind expelled leader Ritabrata Banerjee as Leader of the Opposition, openly defying Mamata's preference for veteran Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay.
The rebels, while professing loyalty to Mamata as a guiding figure, have effectively sidelined her nephew Abhishek Banerjee. In a desperate countermove, the official Trinamool faction dissolved all frontal organisations, leaving only Mamata as the foundational anchor. This is not mere post-defeat sulking, but structural rupture. The TMC, which rode to power in 2011 on the "Maa, Maati, Manush" slogan and held the state for 15 years, has seen its organisational muscle atrophy amid allegations of centralised, corporate-style management.
The crisis mirrors recent splits in the Shiv Sena and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in Maharashtra, where the question of control over party symbols became a legal tussle. With the BJP's Suvendu Adhikari now installed as Bengal's Chief Minister, the power vacuum has emboldened dissenters. Mamata Banerjee, the legendary street fighter who built the TMC from scratch, faces her sternest test yet, and this time, the threat is from within. Her 41% vote share in a relatively free election underscores that her personal appeal remains intact, but institutional decay threatens to erode even that. The coming weeks will decide whether the TMC survives as a coherent force or fragments into irrelevance, a fate that would redefine not just Bengal but opposition dynamics........