Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee dealt with internal frictions in the party she has built from scratch decisively last week. But will it be the end of troubles as she prepares to play a vital role in whatever formulation the Opposition comes up with to take on the ruling dispensation at the Centre in 2024?

Media reports have quoted extensively from what the West Bengal chief minister purportedly said in a two-hour conversation with her nephew and Diamond Harbour MP Abhishek Banerjee on Saturday, where she reportedly did most of the talking. She met her core team comprising six senior party leaders immediately after this tete-a-tete ~ for which Mr Banerjee too was asked to stay back. Suffice it to say that whatever transpired at the back-to-back meetings, Ms Banerjee seems to have succeeded in putting a lid on the simmering tensions within the party, at least for now.

At issue has been the move by the so-called Young Turks who have been pushing for a greater say in party affairs which has ruffled feathers among loyalists from the old guard. The challengers, as it were, are said to have used the ‘one-man-one-post’ demand to push their agenda, arguing that such a move would ensure meritorious, next-generation leaders get their due in the party and state government. The incumbents, many of whom feel directly targeted because they do occupy more than one post, have been pushing back, citing their experience both in building the party and administering the state to iterate that only Ms Banerjee has the authority to enforce any such rule.

True to form, Ms Banerjee has responded by taking the bull by the horns. She has, in one fell swoop, abolished all party posts ~ save that of chairperson which she occupies ~ and set up a national working committee to oversee party affairs till further notice. The message is clear: There is one boss in the Trinamool Congress. But given the crafty political leader that she is, Ms Banerjee must also know she has only kicked the can further down the road.

For, the issues and personalities in play are not amenable to ad-hoc solutions carried through by the sheer weight of Ms Banerjee’s personality or even the massive respect and genuine affection she commands from her party colleagues, old and young. A structural revamp of the party she has so assiduously nurtured for nearly a quarter of century is now becoming increasingly imperative.

Indeed, the current turmoil within the Trinamool Congress provides her an opportunity to put structures and policies in place that would revamp the party and distinguish it from other parties of similar heft elsewhere in the country which have, with a handful of exceptions, historically floundered and splintered in the absence of processes. It would, in the bargain, bolster the Trinamool’s national ambitions as part of an Opposition collective and serve to underline the fact that the ills which plague its parent Congress Party have not permeated its offspring.