In the Trinamool Congress party’s parliamentary office packed with Members of Parliaments (MPs), journalists and a stream of visitors, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee looked for Arpita Ghosh, a gutsy party leader and artist who had already made a name in the Bengali theatre.
That afternoon in 2016, Banerjee asked Ghosh to sing popular Bengali songs and the theatre artist happily obliged with high-pitch renditions, giving a demonstration of her much-practised notes.
On Wednesday, Ghosh met Rajya Sabha chairman Venkaiah Naidu to submit her resignation from the Upper House with five years of her first term still due.
But Ghosh is not an exception. Over the past few years, Trinamool, the second-largest party in Parliament, has seen several leaders being moved from the Rajya Sabha even as it remains a key Opposition powerhouse.
During this year’s Budget session, senior Trinamool leader and former Union rail minister Dinesh Trivedi was speaking on the motion to thank the President for his speech, when he suddenly veered to the situation in West Bengal and claimed feeling ‘suffocated’. The speech ended with his dramatic resignation from the Rajya Sabha.
Trinamool had nominated doctor-turned political leader Manas Bhunia in Rajya Sabha in 2017, but he was made Bengal’s water resource minister and left Rajya Sabha this May. In the upcoming bypoll to fill that vacancy, TMC has nominated Sushmita Dev, daughter of former Union minister Santosh Mohan Dev. She left the Congress a month ago. Trivedi’s seat has gone to former Prasar Bharati CEO Jawhar Sircar, who was one of the first to frame this year’s Bengal’s assembly poll as a battle between top Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders and a woman (Mamata).
Even Mukul Roy, once Banerjee’s most trusted aide, left the party’s Rajya Sabha seat when he resigned in 2017 to join the BJP. Roy is now back in TMC in a complicated relationship as he remains an MLA elected on a BJP ticket.
While a series of Trinamool leaders have quit Rajya Sabha mid-way, former Communist Party of India (Marxist) CPI(M) leader Ritabrata Banerjee aligned himself with Banerjee’s party when he was expelled in 2017. He turned into an associate member of Trinamool before joining the party as state general secretary of its trade union wing.
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