Abhishek Banerjee moved to defuse a worsening Trinamool Congress feud after senior party MP Kalyan Banerjee publicly accused him of arrogance, choosing restraint at a moment when Mamata Banerjee’s organisation is battling dissent across its parliamentary and legislative wings.
“Kalyan Banerjee is older than me,” Abhishek told reporters on Friday evening after a meeting at Mamata Banerjee’s Kalighat residence. “He has the right to express his views. He has seen me from childhood. I won’t speak anything against him.” The calibrated response marked an attempt to lower the temperature after Kalyan, one of the party’s most combative veterans, asked Mamata to choose between her nephew and leaders who had served the party for decades.
The rupture has exposed the strain inside the Trinamool Congress after its severe setback in the West Bengal Assembly election, where the Bharatiya Janata Party won 207 of 294 seats and the TMC was reduced to 80. Mamata also lost Bhabanipur to Suvendu Adhikari by 15,105 votes, ending a political phase in which she had dominated the state’s power structure since 2011.
Kalyan, the Sreerampur MP and a senior advocate, had been expected to represent Abhishek in litigation linked to a CID probe over alleged signature irregularities in documents connected to the choice of the Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly. The dispute escalated after Kalyan said he learnt that a separate petition had been filed over search operations without his knowledge. He said he would no longer appear in any court matter concerning Abhishek, while continuing to fight cases linked to the party.
His remarks went beyond legal procedure. Kalyan accused Abhishek of showing no respect for his professional experience and said he could not be treated as a functionary of the Camac Street office associated with the Diamond Harbour MP. He made it clear that he wanted Mamata to decide whether the party would stand with its older organisation hands or remain under Abhishek’s effective command.
The tension comes as Mamata is trying to contain a rebellion that has moved beyond private discontent. Dissident leaders have claimed the backing of a majority of TMC legislators, with one group asserting support from 64 MLAs and pressing for recognition as the “real” Trinamool bloc. A separate group of Lok Sabha MPs has been exploring a move to seek separate recognition in Parliament, claiming the support of 19 members.
Those claims remain politically contested and legally complex. The anti-defection framework places restrictions on breakaway groups, while party-symbol disputes usually require scrutiny of organisational and legislative strength. Still, the public nature of the rebellion has created the sharpest internal challenge to Mamata’s authority since the party emerged from the Congress in 1998.
Abhishek’s troubles are not limited to the internal dispute. He was questioned by the CID for more than five hours on Thursday in the signature forgery case and faced a fresh attempt by investigators to serve him notice in another matter relating to campaign remarks made before the Assembly polls. He has denied evading investigators and said he has cooperated with central and state agencies whenever summoned.
The party has portrayed the police action as politically driven, while the BJP has rejected that charge and said investigative agencies must be allowed to function. The clash has added another layer to a leadership crisis in which legal pressure, post-election blame and succession anxieties have converged.
Mamata convened senior leaders at her Kalighat residence to assess the situation, with Abhishek, Derek O’Brien, Madan Mitra, Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay and Kunal Ghosh among those present. Kalyan’s absence from the meeting fuelled speculation that the reconciliation effort remained fragile despite Abhishek’s conciliatory remarks.
Kalyan later responded more softly, describing Abhishek as being “like a son” and saying party leaders needed to work together against the BJP. That shift offered the leadership some room for damage control, though it did not erase the substance of his complaint: that sections of the old guard feel bypassed by a younger power centre built around Abhishek.
The immediate question for the TMC is whether Mamata can keep the disagreement from hardening into a wider organisational split. For Abhishek, the task is more personal and political: retaining authority without further alienating veterans whose loyalty helped build the party’s district and parliamentary networks. The next test will come as dissident MPs and MLAs decide whether to press their claims formally before institutional authorities.
