Just one month after losing power in India’s 100-million-population eastern state of West Bengal, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) — once the country’s most successful regional political force — is facing an unprecedented existential crisis, as a large-scale rebellion of its own legislators and a growing parliamentary split threaten to dismantle the party built by charismatic founder Mamata Banerjee.
Banerjee is no ordinary regional political figure. In 2011, the firebrand leader pulled off what many considered a political miracle: ending 34 consecutive years of Communist Party rule in West Bengal, bringing down one of the world’s longest-serving democratically elected left-wing governments. Her landmark victory earned her a spot on Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world, and she went on to lead the state for 15 years, cementing the TMC’s status as a dominant regional power and her own reputation as one of India’s most formidable opposition leaders.
That legacy makes the past month’s rapid unraveling all the more startling. In last month’s state election, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s national ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept to power, ending TMC’s 15-year incumbency amid a campaign defined by anti-incumbency sentiment, religious polarization, and widespread controversy over electoral roll integrity. Contrary to narratives of total defeat, however, the TMC remained a formidable electoral force: it secured 26 million popular votes, just 3 million fewer than the BJP, holding 40% of the total vote share, 80 seats in the state legislative assembly, and 28 national parliamentary seats.
Instead of regrouping to rebuild opposition, the party is fracturing from within. The most severe blow has come from the state legislature, where roughly three-quarters of TMC’s elected legislators have launched an open revolt against Banerjee and her nephew Abhishek Banerjee, widely positioned as her political heir. Rebels have seized control of the TMC’s legislative caucus, appointed their own opposition leader, and levied accusations of signature forgery against the party’s top leadership against top party leadership.
What began as a state-level mutiny has now spread to India’s national capital in New Delhi. Reports indicate that 20 out of the TMC’s 28 sitting members of parliament have submitted a formal letter to the parliamentary speaker requesting to split from the TMC’s parliamentary group and align with the BJP-led national ruling alliance. If the split is formalized, it will escalate the crisis from a legislative rebellion to an existential threat to TMC’s very existence as a unified political party.
This parliamentary revolt is just the most visible sign of a broader organizational collapse. In Falta, a constituency that TMC won with 56% of the vote in the 2021 state election, the party failed to even field a candidate for a recent repoll. Earlier this June, a public rally organized by Banerjee drew only a few hundred attendees — a stark contrast to the massive crowds that once packed her events at the height of her political power. TMC leaders are being arrested on corruption charges daily, local party offices sit empty, long-standing organizational networks are being dismantled, and once-powerful party figures face public attacks even in their former strongholds.
Political analysts say the rapid collapse of TMC exposes deep structural weaknesses in the party’s foundation. Unlike the 34-year Communist government it ousted in 2011, TMC never built a robust ideological framework that could sustain the party through a loss of power. According to Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya, a political scientist studying Indian regional politics, the party’s unity always rested on two interconnected pillars: Banerjee’s unrivaled personal charismatic brand, and access to state patronage that comes with holding public office.
“To maintain control across the entire state, Banerjee relied far more on powerful local strongmen granted extensive autonomy over their regional fiefdoms than on formal party institutions,” Bhattacharyya explained. This system functioned seamlessly while TMC held power: local leaders competed aggressively for influence, generating frequent internal rivalries and occasional violence, but incumbency provided access to patronage, political protection, and what critics describe as widespread opportunities for illicit enrichment.
Today, both pillars holding TMC together have collapsed. The party lost control of the state government, and Banerjee’s own personal defeat in her Kolkata constituency has badly tarnished the aura of invincibility that long anchored her political brand. Left exposed to rival factions, anti-corruption investigations, and voter anger, local power brokers face overwhelming pressure to defect and switch their political allegiances.
This is where the BJP steps in as a catalyst for the split. Rahul Verma, a fellow at the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research, notes that the rise of a nationally dominant BJP has completely reshaped the incentives for regional politicians across India. “In previous decades, defections were usually limited to individual leaders breaking away on their own. Today, entire factions can stage a rebellion because the BJP offers an alternative center of power, access to new resources, and formal political protection,” Verma explained. He added that this pattern mirrors the 2022 split of the powerful western Indian regional party Shiv Sena, where a succession battle and the concentration of power within a single political family triggered a large-scale defection.
Verma frames TMC’s crisis as part of a broader shift in Indian politics, where regional parties have grown increasingly centralized and family-centric. Ambitious long-time party lieutenants often accept the authority of a founding leader, but many refuse to defer power to a hereditary heir, a dynamic that played out in the Shiv Sena split when Uddhav Thackeray elevated his son Aditya Thackeray to lead the party. Before the BJP’s national rise, dissidents rarely had the resources to mount a successful challenge to sitting family leadership — but that dynamic has shifted dramatically.
“When you combine generational leadership transitions with patronage-driven party structures, you get a volatile mix: once a regional party loses power, local leaders who joined for access to power and influence see little reason to stay loyal,” Verma added.
For her part, 71-year-old Banerjee has remained openly defiant in the face of the crisis. She has labeled the BJP’s election victory “illegal” and “immoral,” alleging that the party stole roughly 100 assembly seats through electoral manipulation. She has dismissed the ongoing rebellion as blatant opportunism, noting “For so long, some people enjoyed power with us, and now that we have lost office, they immediately reached an understanding with another party.” Still, she remains adamant that TMC can recover: “We will rebuild the party anew. TMC is not for its leaders; it is for its grassroots workers.”
It remains too early to tell whether TMC can survive what is increasingly being framed as an existential crisis. Some analysts note that the current rebellion, led by a relatively minor former communist legislator who previously defected to TMC, could fizzle out, with rebels splintering further and eventually returning to Banerjee’s fold. But if the 20 MPs calling for a split hold their ground, the challenge could reshape West Bengal’s political landscape permanently.
Still, analysts warn that writing off Banerjee entirely would be a mistake. “If there is one face in West Bengal that still attracts widespread attention, and one voice that people cannot simply dismiss, it is hers,” Bhattacharyya said. Any successful revival, however, will require more than Banerjee’s well-documented charisma: it will demand deep organizational renewal and difficult leadership changes, areas that have not historically been Banerjee’s greatest strengths.
Throughout her decades-long political career, Banerjee has repeatedly defied long political odds. But the challenge facing her today is unlike any she has encountered before. Overthrowing a 34-year incumbency is one thing; rebuilding a political party from scratch after most of its own elected leaders abandoned it is an entirely different test.
