Everything seems to be going downhill for Mamata Banerjee and her party Trinamool Congress during the past 6 weeks. The party, led by Mamata Banerjee ruled West Bengal with an iron fist for the last 15 years, but now seems to be disintegrating rapidly following the electoral loss in recent assembly elections.
In the West Bengal assembly elections, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept to power defeating TMC. On the results declared on May 4, BJP won 208 seats out of 293, while TMC was reduced to 80. The defeat has hurt TMC and Mamata Banerjee harder than most expected.
Several party MLAs and MPs have tried to disassociated themselves from the Trinamool Congress after the defeat. Ritabrata Banerjee, the MLA expelled from TMC, emerged as the Leader of Opposition in the assembly as a large number of TMC MLAs supported him for the post over TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee’s choice.
The rebellion didn’t limit itself to just the state assembly, it stretched to the centre as well. Multiple Rajya Sabha MPs of TMC resigned from the party expressing their dissatisfaction with the party. Now, even Lok Sabha MPs are looking to break away from Mamata Banerjee, and more worryingly for Mamata Banerjee, are even threatening to take away the TMC’s party symbol as well with them.
As per reports, a group of 19 TMC MPs submitted a letter to Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla backing the formation of a separate parliamentary faction and are staking claim to the TMC’s symbol. This rebel group has said that they are the real TMC. Since this group has greater than 2/3rd majority of the TMC MPs, they do have a case.
According to Sources here is the list of 19 out of 20 TMC breakaway MPs that sent their names to the Lok Sabha Speaker’s Office on May 18th.
— ANI (@ANI) June 12, 2026
1. Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar
2. Satabdi Roy
3. Bapi Haldar
4. Dr. Sharmila Sarkar
5. Prasun Bandyopadhyay
6. Jagadish Barma Basunia
7. Asit… pic.twitter.com/MM2rPhYuaf
The group of rebel MPs includes leaders like Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, Satabdi Roy, June Maliah, Saayoni Ghosh, and Yusuf Pathan.
The rebel TMC MPs will now meet Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and formally press their claim for the TMC symbol, and to be recognised formally as TMC.
Mamata Banerjee reportedly sketched the party symbol when she founded the party in 1998 after breaking away from the Congress, and now it could be taken away from her as her party leaders leave her one by one.
This does raise a question, if a large majority of TMC leaders were so unhappy with Mamata Banerjee’s leadership, why were they hanging around her? Was it just because she was winning elections over the past 15 years? It does seem so that they were just hanging around to get a share of the power and once power went out of Mamata’s hands, they abandoned her and TMC quicker than you can say Trinamool Congress.
Anyway, this is now one of the toughest periods of Mamata Banerjee’s political career and how she navigates this period, and keeps hold of her party’s symbol, remains to be seen.
