Rebels Saayoni and Mala fly off to Delhi after TMC axes key positions amid internal rift

The internal crisis within the Trinamool Congress (TMC) has reached a boiling point as rebel Lok Sabha MPs Saayoni Ghosh and Mala Roy departed Kolkata for New Delhi on Sunday. According to dissident lawmaker Jagadish Barma Basunia, the breakaway faction has successfully secured a formal appointment with Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on June 15. The rebel lawmakers intend to present a signed memorandum to the Speaker, seeking official recognition as the "real TMC" in Parliament following the party's severe defeat in the 2026 West Bengal Assembly elections.

In a swift retaliatory strike, party chairperson Mamata Banerjee has stripped both high-profile rebel leaders of their organizational responsibilities. Barely a week after reappointing Saayoni Ghosh as the TMC youth wing president during an organizational overhaul, Banerjee removed the Jadavpur MP and replaced her with youth leader Arnab Banerjee. Similarly, Kolkata Dakshin MP Mala Roy was axed from her position as the national president of the Trinamool Mahila Congress (women's wing) and replaced by Alifa Ahmed, the party's MLA from Kaliganj in Nadia district. Senior party sources indicated that these decisions had been finalized three days prior during an emergency meeting.

The rebellion has dealt an existential blow to the Trinamool Congress, with the dissident camp claiming that senior parliamentarian Sudip Bandyopadhyay has officially joined their ranks. According to breakaway leaders, 20 out of the TMC's 28 Lok Sabha members have already signed the declaration challenging Mamata Banerjee's leadership. Rebel MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar went on record to declare that once the breakaway bloc receives formal recognition from the Lok Sabha Speaker, the group intends to extend its legislative support to the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in Parliament.

Faced with an unprecedented mutiny among both state legislators and parliamentarians, Mamata Banerjee had dissolved all frontal organizations on June 5 to pack committees with trusted loyalists, while simultaneously retaining her nephew Abhishek Banerjee as the national general secretary. However, the mass defection has triggered immense bitterness among party loyalists. Commenting on the developments, a senior TMC Rajya Sabha MP remarked that Mamata Banerjee had nurtured people with milk and honey, only for them to turn out to be snakes.