After a crushing defeat in the West Bengal assembly election, Trinamool Congress supremo and former chief minister Mamata Banerjee faces sweeping rebellion in the assembly and in parliament. Against that backdrop, Mamata has gone to Congress leader Sonia Gandhi. Meanwhile, at a press conference on Tuesday, loyalist MP Kalyan Banerjee — accompanied by MP Kirti Azad — attacked the rebels.
On the revolt, Kalyan Banerjee said: “They (the rebel MPs) went to Bhupender Yadav’s residence; Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari also went there. That means they have joined the BJP. They have dropped Mamata Banerjee and made Narendra Modi their leader.” Reacting to the rebels’ move toward the NDA, he taunted the BJP: “You have the chief minister, the ED, the CBI and other powers — but I have ‘Ma, Mati, Manush,’ my party, my party workers and the people of West Bengal.” Targeting the star MPs among the rebels, he said: “Film stars are all alien stars. Their idea is that since the public runs to see us, everyone in parliament will run after us too.” Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, one of the faces of the rebel camp, responded to Kalyan’s attack in turn.
The rebel Trinamool leaders say countless grievances — from corruption to the impossibility of reaching the party chief — had accumulated over years, building a discontent that is now haunting Mamata’s party. Shatabdi Roy, a four-term MP and one of the rebellion’s faces, who has been at Mamata’s side since 2009, claimed the former chief minister, popularly known as “Didi,” has “changed” recently — a change she has not taken well. Roy said people often ask why they stayed silent earlier and are raising the issues only now, when the party is at its weakest: “The reason is that everything is becoming clear now. We saw what happened while the Trinamool was in power. I understand the present situation, but I have to do this for the people of my constituency.”
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report