The Wilting of the Joda Phool
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By Our Editorial Team
First publised on 2026-06-04 23:47:16
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The India Commentary view
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The Trinamool Congress has split for the first time in its 28-year history. On June 3, 2026, 58 rebel MLAs - representing a two-thirds majority of the party's 80-strong legislative group - seized control of the TMC's legislature wing, elected expelled leader Ritabrata Banerjee as their Leader of Opposition, and secured formal recognition from the West Bengal Assembly Speaker. The joda phool, Mamata Banerjee's proud symbol, is wilting in real time.
The immediate trigger was a dispute over the Leader of Opposition post following the TMC's defeat in the 2026 assembly elections. Mamata Banerjee's faction proposed Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay. The rebels refused. Allegations of forged signatures on a rival proposal turned a manageable internal dispute into open revolt. The party expelled Ritabrata Banerjee and Sandipan Saha. The rebels responded by formalising the split.
But to call this a dispute over a legislative post is to miss the point entirely. The rebellion is fundamentally about Abhishek Banerjee. The rebels have been explicit. Ritabrata Banerjee declared that Abhishek would have "absolutely no role" in the legislature wing, that neither the party organisation nor the public had any connection with him. In one press conference, the rebels dismantled what Abhishek had spent years constructing - the image of himself as the natural heir to Mamata's political empire.
Abhishek's rise within the TMC was built on Mamata's authority, not his own. He wielded that borrowed authority aggressively - centralising party organisation, sidelining veteran leaders, and making accountability flow exclusively through him. TMC cadres and legislators tolerated this while the party was in power and patronage was available. Once the BJP swept Bengal in 2026 and the patronage networks collapsed, the incentive to accept Abhishek's dominance evaporated. What looked like organisational discipline was merely compulsion.
The crisis does not stop at the state's borders. Highly-placed sources have indicated that at least 20 TMC MPs are in active discussions with the BJP about switching loyalties. The TMC is the second-largest opposition bloc in Parliament. A defection of this scale would devastate its national relevance and trigger a legal battle over the party's name and symbol - a replay of the Maharashtra Shiv Sena crisis, with no clearer outcome in sight for Mamata.
The rebels, notably, have not repudiated Mamata herself. They have proposed she serve as chief adviser to the rebel legislature group. This is a calculated message. They are telling the public - and Mamata - that the problem was never her. The problem was Abhishek. Whether this distinction survives political reality is another matter. But it places Mamata in an impossible position. To acknowledge it is to destroy her nephew. To reject it is to own his failures.
The TMC was always a party of one. Its ideology was Mamata. Its organisation was Mamata. Its electoral logic was Mamata. That worked as long as Mamata won. She does not win anymore. A frail Mamata holding a sit-in protest in Kolkata on June 2 - the image that circulated nationally - was not a symbol of defiance. It was a symbol of a party out of power and out of answers.
The joda phool bloomed because one woman willed it into existence. It is wilting for the same reason. What one person's will builds, one person's mortality - and one nephew's overreach - can undo. That is the TMC's tragedy. Time will tell whether it is also its epitaph.
The lead image is AI-generated
