Kolkata: Former Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee today expelled eight senior leaders from the party, including Aroop Biswas, Firhad Hakim, Zaved Khan and Arup Roy, amid an escalating internal crisis. The expulsion came less than a day after the leaders were served show notice by the Khalighat faction of TMC.
Party sources said the disciplinary action was taken before their responses to the notices were received. Those expelled include Aroop Biswas Firhad Hakim, Arup Roy, Javed Khan, Rathin Ghosh, Biplav Mitra, Sabina Yashmin and Shehasis Chakraborty.
The move follows their reported association with a rival l faction led by TMC MLA Ritabrata Banerjee, which has been projecting itself as a ” real” Trinamool Congress. Several of the expelled leaders have already joined Ritabrata Bannerjee’s camp and have reportedly been included in its newly announced organizational structure.
The political developments gathered pace on Monday when senior leaders, including Firhad Hakim and Aroop Biswas, were seen in the special session of the rival faction at a five-star hotel in Kolkata.
Political observers believe the expulsion mark one of the most significant internal confrontations in the history of the Trinamool Congress. Ritabrata Banerjee has also hinted that more leaders could join his faction in the coming days, suggesting that the political realignment may continue.
It may be noted that a rebel plenary session led by Ritabrata Banerjee dissolved the Trinamool Congress national working committee on Monday evening replacing Mamata Banerjee as Chairperson and stripping Abhishek Banerjee of his post as national General Secretary. For the first time since the party’s formation in 1988, its founder and former Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is not its Chairperson.
However, the physical reality of 64 of Trinamool’s 80 MLAs abandoned Khalighat has undoubtedly altered the maths for the party and Bengal politics. The fight now shifts to an inevitable, high-stakes legal warfare over the party’s symbol– twin flowers– stretching from the Election Commission to the Supreme Court.
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