West Bengal has lived through both since May. The Bharatiya Janata Party has come to power, Suvendu Adhikari took oath as chief minister on May 9, and the Trinamool Congress, after fifteen years in office, has been reduced to eighty seats and a public family war.

Mamata Banerjee lost Bhabanipur to the man who once sat in her cabinet. A hundred days is not enough to judge the work of a new government. It is enough to study the larger political space. In that space, she is still a force, not only because she was chief minister, but because these weeks have been a daily battle for survival. Setback has followed setback. Factionalism has eaten into the party.

The BJP can announce any political stand it likes. The reality on the ground is that there have been targeted attempts to break the Trinamool Congress, and that is precisely why Mamata Banerjee remains relevant. Power has changed hands. The fight has not left her name.

Anatomy Of Breaking The TMC

Today, there is little doubt in Bengal that the breaking of the Trinamool Congress happened with the direct persuasion of the BJP. First, the MLAs came out. A large majority of the eighty legislators gathered behind Ritabrata Banerjee, wrote to Assembly Speaker Rathindra Bose, and crossed the two-thirds line that protects a split. The Speaker accepted this camp as the legislature party and gave it the Leader of the Opposition's chamber. Javed Khan, Sandipan Saha and others were placed in the new floor leadership.

Then the MPs moved. Twenty of the party's twenty-eight Lok Sabha members, led by Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar and Sudip Bandyopadhyay, formed a separate block and announced a merger with the Nationalist Citizens Party of India. In numbers, the NCPI is now the BJP's biggest formal companion from the old Trinamool bench in Parliament.

Meetings between rebel MLAs and Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari became part of the summer's political traffic. In the case of the MPs, the chief minister himself was present in that traffic, along with BJP leader and Union minister Bhupender Yadav. In the Assembly, this helps the BJP because the rebel faction that has the Speaker's acceptance as the real opposition party is not standing up and taking a daily stand against the government.

The July 21 Rally

The Trinamool Congress has folded July 21 into its calendar because Martyrs' Day is the party's founding memory, the 1993 police firing on a Youth Congress march that Mamata Banerjee had led. The day is how the party reminds Bengal that it was born on the street. This year, the ritual split into three rallies in central Kolkata.

One was Mamata Banerjee's, shifted near the Birla Planetarium after permission fights and a night spent guarding a vandalised stage. One was the rebel camp's, on Mayo Road, with Ritabrata Banerjee, Firhad Hakim, Madan Mitra, Javed Khan and Anubrata Mondal on the dais. One was the Congress's, at Shahid Minar, reclaiming a day that once belonged to its own workers. The real presence of people was at the Mamata Banerjee rally.

There was also a good footfall at the Congress rally. The rebel ground had leaders and a thin crowd. That picture is the argument in one afternoon. The rebels have office bearers. Mamata Banerjee still has grassroots support.

Relevance In National Politics

In Parliament, the weight the Trinamool Congress once carried has come down. Twenty MPs walking into the NCPI did that damage in a single stroke. Many Rajya Sabha MPs resigned, and three of them — Sukhendu Shekhar Roy, Sushmita Dev and Prakash Chik Baraik — joined the BJP and were re-elected to the Rajya Sabha.

As an individual leader, Mamata Banerjee still holds relevance because, after the defeat in Bengal, she has grown softer towards the Congress. She has kept a working rapport with opposition parties such as the Rashtriya Janata Dal, the Samajwadi Party and Uddhav Thackeray's Shiv Sena. Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party is not part of the INDIA bloc, but she has a personal connection with Kejriwal that she has not thrown away.

This time, her meeting with Sonia Gandhi after more than five years, and Abhishek Banerjee's meeting with Rahul Gandhi, were significant because they placed her back inside the national opposition room when her own legislature party was walking out. The conversations were about coordination against the BJP and the long road to 2029. A party can shrink in the Lok Sabha and a leader can still be the person other opposition houses need when they want Bengal in the frame.

MLAs Are Coming Back

Several rebel MLAs are directly or indirectly now testing the way home. Kasem Siddiqui, the Amdanga legislator, left the Ritabrata Banerjee camp in late August and stood again with Mamata Banerjee. He said he had signed on the promise that the faction would still work under Didi.

When her name vanished from its functioning, he said he had been misled. People voted because her posters were on the wall, he said, and he would remain where she remains. Others in her camp have backed this return and claimed more legislators want to follow. The rebels dismiss the scale.

The arithmetic underneath is colder. In the opposition space, Mamata Banerjee's remaining value is being understood again. Without her support, winning is close to impossible. These leaders won on her face.

They have little independent credential of their own. If the BJP does not support them directly, they have no grassroots machine that can carry a name through a booth. Their careers look grim the moment the borrowed crowd stops answering.

Muslim Factor

The Muslim MLAs and MPs are in a very difficult situation, and they know why. The legislators have realised that the rebel camp is seen as a formation with direct backing from the BJP. That means these leaders will struggle to work in their areas and draw support because the community will not easily accept BJP-backed faces.

The key three MPs now in the NCPI, Abu Taher Khan, Khalilur Rahaman and Yusuf Pathan, have already said they will not support the BJP or the NDA and will not vote for measures they consider hostile to Muslims. Muslims constitute about twenty-seven percent of Bengal's population.

In the coming days, that bloc could still remain with Mamata Banerjee. In the Muslim-majority pockets, however, the support of the Congress is also increasing, which is why the Shahid Minar crowd on July 21 should not be read as a one-day show.

The Street Politics Factor

Mamata Banerjee knows street politics best. She is old now, and the body shows the years, but the instinct has not retired. On different issues, she has been hitting the streets-against post-poll violence, against bulldozer drives that struck hawkers, at student protests, at pavement evictions, and on the night before Martyrs' Day when she refused to leave a broken stage.

Suvendu Adhikari can tell her to stay home. The role of the real opposition is still with her faction because opposition in Bengal is not only a chamber allotted by a Speaker. It is the woman who can turn a grievance into a procession.

Sympathy Factor

One of the main reasons behind the defeat of the Trinamool Congress was grassroots corruption, and the people and leaders associated with that corruption. The majority of the prominent names who carried that stain-Javed Khan, Aroop Biswas, Anubrata Mondal-have joined the rebel camp and now enjoy the protection that proximity to the new power can buy from probes and pressure.

On the other side, Mamata Banerjee is struggling for her symbol, her flock and her evenings on the road. That contrast is creating a sympathy wave towards her and making her more relevant every day. The BJP has the House. The rebels have the letters. She still has the older currency of this state: the ability to look abandoned and still look like the fight.

Sayantan Ghosh teaches journalism at St. Xavier's College (Autonomous), Kolkata. He is on X as @sayantan_gh.

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Author : Sayantan Ghosh