An emergency meeting of the Trinamul Congress leadership has been called by party chairperson Mamata Banerjee at her Kalighat residence tomorrow in the wake of the ‘One person One post’ demand within the party coming out in the open and stoking controversy.
An apparent rift seems to have grown within the TMC where a set of party leaders have been advocating for the implementation of certain changes in the party structure as envisioned by Abhishek Banerjee, the party’s national general secretary. With Abhishek’s apparent backers today posting on Facebook the demand for the application of the One person One Post policy, several senior members of the party have criticised the move and are viewing it as an anti-party stance.
Of late, the TMC has been visited by confusion and recrimination after it released two sets of candidate lists for the elections to 108 municipalities in the state that sparked a furore among party members, many of whom turned rebel and are contesting as Independent candidates against their own party candidates.
According to party insiders, this confusion originated from the two sets of lists where one was drawn up allegedly by I-PAC led by Prashant Kishore. This list is said to have been made with suggestions from Abhishek Banerjee. However, another list was circulated that was signed by the party’s secretary-general Partha Chatterjee and president Subrata Bakshi which did not have the names present in the other list.
To quell the tension, Mamata Banerjee gave out strict instructions that the list signed by Chatterjee and Bakshi is to be treated as final. Rebels have been warned to back off by Saturday. However, such situations have paved the way for an apparent rift in the TMC- one group in support of Mamata Banerjee and others backing Abhishek. Banerjee today has reportedly conveyed her decision to hold a crucial meeting at her residence tomorrow which party insiders feel is to put an end to the intraparty feuds that are damaging the party’s reputation and sending a wrong message to the Opposition at a time when TMC is realising its dreams to make a political imprint on a national level.
A fresh row on “One Person, One Post” was sparked off after TMC leader and minister Chandrima Bhattacharya posted the slogan on her social media handle. However, she later claimed that the post was done by consultancy group I-PAC. But I-PAC refuted the allegations by the minister and said it does not manage the digital handles of TMC and its leaders. In another development, TMC state general secretary Kunal Ghosh, on Twitter, demanded the arrest of party colleague Mukul Roy in the Saradha and Narada case while calling him a “BJP leader”.