TMC's Assam Unit Stands by Mamata Banerjee Amid Party Turmoil

Amid the ongoing turmoil in the Trinamool Congress, the party’s only MLA in Assam, Sherman Ali Ahmed, led a meeting of party workers and leaders in the state on Friday, in which he resolved that “the Assam unit will be with Mamata Banerjee”. On June 3, all committees of the TMC in Assam had been dissolved, simultaneously with those in West Bengal, after the party was stunned by 59 of its 80 elected West Bengal MLAs defying Mamata Banerjee and backing expelled TMC MLA Ritabrata Banerjee as Leader of the Opposition in the state. TMC National Joint Secretary Derek O’Brien had written to Sherman Ali Ahmed, who was recently elected as the TMC’s only MLA in Assam, to take charge of all affairs of the party’s Assam unit until it is reconstituted. On Friday, he led a meeting with a set of 53 party workers and district leaders. “This was the first meeting we had since I was appointed, and we took two important resolutions. One was that we from the Assam unit will be with Mamata Banerjee. We have expressed our solidarity, and we will work with her to strengthen the hands of the party,” he told The Indian Express. The second, he said, is to “initiate disciplinary proceedings” against three former state unit general secretaries and one former district president, who he said are “trying to align with the Ritabrata group”. The TMC continues to suffer setbacks with the latest exits from the party being Rajya Sabha MP Koel Mallick and one of Mamata Banerjee’s oldest associates, Madan Mitra. Apart from its rebel West Bengal MLAs, 20 of the party’s 28 Lok Sabha MPs have also broken away from the party to merge with the little-known Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI). The TMC has always struggled to find a foothold in Assam, and amid the turmoil, the party’s most prominent face from Assam, Rajya Sabha MP Sushmita Dev, also quit and later joined the BJP. Dev has subsequently been nominated by the BJP to the Rajya Sabha. But while Dev is from Assam’s primarily Bengali-populated Barak Valley, she had been sent to the Rajya Sabha by the TMC from West Bengal. The party only registered a presence with Sherman Ali Ahmed’s win in this year’s Assembly election — a win that can be largely attributed to his individual appeal since he joined the party just days before voting day. On Dev’s exit from the TMC and where that has left the party’s state unit, Ahmed said, “I can’t say she was a prominent figure in Assam. We can see the performance by the party’s candidates in the Barak Valley under her leadership… Some MPs and MLAs may leave the party, but the larger support is with Mamata Bannerjee, and we will constitute a new committee soon.”