Kolkata, 4 June 

For a politician who built her career on defiance, resilience and an instinctive understanding of Bengal's political pulse, the past month -- the one that marks the aftermath of the West Bengal Assembly election results -- has been nothing short of a political earthquake for Mamata Banerjee.

Exactly a month ago, Banerjee remained the undisputed face of the Trinamool Congress, commanding a formidable legislative force. But the party's crushing electoral defeat at the hands of the BJP dramatically altered the political landscape.

The setback was made more personal by her own loss from Bhabanipur to her archrival and, as most would like to qualify, her nemesis -- Suvendu Adhikari -- from a constituency long regarded as her political fortress. The poll results shrank the TMC's strength in the Assembly to 80 MLAs, leaving Banerjee to lead the opposition from a position of unprecedented weakness. The party had 215 MLAs in the 2021 state polls.

Yet, what appeared to be a devastating electoral defeat has rapidly evolved into an existential crisis for the party she founded in 1998.

On Wednesday, a group of dissident TMC legislators submitted letters of support from 58 MLAs to Assembly Speaker Rathindra Bose, backing expelled leader Ritabrata Banerjee as the leader of their legislature party and staking claim to the position of Leader of the Opposition. Ritabrata claimed that the rebel faction had two more MLAs as backup.

The move, which received the Speaker's subsequent sanction, effectively signalled that more than two-thirds of the party's legislators had drifted away from Banerjee's authority inside the Bengal Assembly.

The symbolism could hardly be starker. Only days earlier, the TMC had expelled Ritabrata Banerjee and fellow MLA Sandipan Saha for alleged anti-party activities, accusing them of undermining the organisation. Instead of extinguishing the rebellion, the expulsions appear to have accelerated it.

TMC’s meteoric rise

The TMC's journey in the Bengal Assembly has mirrored its meteoric rise until its recent decline.

Riding a historic anti-Left wave, the party secured 184 seats in 2011 and, along with allies, ended the Left Front's 34-year rule. It consolidated its dominance with 211 seats in 2016 before reaching its zenith in 2021, winning 215 of the Assembly's 294 seats under Banerjee's leadership. Political observers note that Banerjee now confronts a challenge unlike any she has faced in nearly three decades of public life.

She has survived electoral setbacks, central investigations, organisational revolts and ideological battles. But this crisis strikes at the very heart of her authority: control over the party apparatus and legislative wing.

"There was little surprise involved in the disintegration of the party once it suffered electoral defeat. That's because the party's primary objective -- to remove the Left Front from state power -- was met once it won the 2011 polls," said Shubhomoy Maitra, political analyst. "It had no ideological fulcrum or, for that matter, a long-term development vision for the state. There was nothing left for its MLAs to hold on to, except personal interests," he said.

In an apparent attempt to regain control, the TMC dissolvedseveral key organisational committees and frontal wings, a move widely interpreted as a last-ditch effort to prevent a formal split. Banerjee herself has accused the BJP of using "money, arrests and threats" to engineer a split in her party.

Speaking at a recent protest, she alleged that a concerted campaign was underway to fracture the TMC and weaken opposition politics in Bengal.

The BJP, meanwhile, has little incentive to immediately absorb the dissidents. Several analysts point to the Maharashtra precedent, where a breakaway faction was encouraged to emerge as a separate political force rather than being directly merged into the ruling party. The growing references in Bengal to an "Eknath Shinde model" reflect concerns that the state's politics may be entering a similar phase of realignment.

"Despite Mamata Banerjee's amazing public life, one cannot ignore the fact that she is past 70. At this age, a turnaround with the same vigour she moved around with during the last four decades seems difficult. Unless, of course, a politically improbable situation crops up that could script her comeback," Maitra said.

Yet, writing Banerjee's political obituary would be premature.

Few leaders in contemporary Indian politics possess her capacity for political reinvention. She rose from the margins to dislodge the 34-year-old Left Front government, survived repeated predictions of decline and transformed a regional movement into one of India's most influential opposition parties.

Even now, the dissident camp has carefully continued to acknowledge her as party chairperson, suggesting that the revolt is directed more against the existing leadership structure and not so much against Banerjee herself.

Senior TMC leader Saugata Roy said there's a strong chance that Banerjee would tide past the current crisis, given her track record as a fighter. "Such periods of crisis are temporary in a political life. Only a decade ago, the BJP had just three seats in the assembly. Look where they are now," he said.

"Even this won't last forever. Mamata needs to wait this out. These so-called rebel MLAs will also return to the party fold sooner, rather than later," the veteran leader said.

Asked, in the wake of the MLA mutiny against Abhishe kBanerjee, whether Mamata Banerjee has reached a juncture where she needs to choose between the party and her nephew, Roy dismissed the conjecture as "superficial".

"There's no need for a knee-jerk reaction to a political problem such as this. Let's see how she handles this," he said.

Yet, observers believe that the central question is whether Banerjee can once again convert adversity into opportunity. If she succeeds in portraying herself as a victim of political engineering, she may yet retain her stature among the party's grassroots workers. If she fails, the crisis could mark the beginning of the most dramatic unravelling of a political empire Bengal has witnessed since the decline of the Left Front.