TRINAMOOL Congress (TMC) has split -- as had been predicted by many a political observer. The developments in the TMC in the last 2-3 days show that its founder and chief Ms. Mamata Banerjee has lost control over the party that ruled West Bengal for a full fifteen years in a row. The developments also point to another fact that the TMC had no philosophical or spiritual bindings to keep the flock together. In other words, the TMC was a fully transactional organisatoion where everybody survived on the give-and-take principle -- well beyond and firmed up ideology. Power was TMC’s core value and ideology, and once the power has gone away, the party is headed for disaster, the indications of which are now available on the ground. No matter the details, what has mattered most is with power having slipped from the grip, the TMC rank and-file do not know how to respond to the changed situation or how to keep the flock together without the glue of power. The developments of the past 2-3 days, thus, point to the beginning of the end of Trinamool Congress party.

 

In the next some time, the party will lose more of its ability to hold itself together. The party may not die at least for some more years. Yet, it will stop being an effective political force -- unless its leadership takes some radical decisions and cuts off the uncalled for burden and starts its journey all over again. As expected, the TMC has led itself into a virtual split in the Legislative Assembly where overwhelming numbers of its legislators have voted in favour of Mr. Ritabrata Banerjee as the Leader of Opposition (LoP) much against the wish of Ms. Mamata Banerjee and her close aide Mr. Abhishek Banerjee. Many TMC legislators have complained that their signatures were earlier forged to give the Speaker an altogether different picture. Now, with majority of the legislators backing Mr. Ritabrata Banerjee, the TMC is headed for an official split -- which is sure to leave for Ms. Mamata Banerjee only a handful colleagues. In a spiteful mood, Ms. Mamata Banerjee has dissolved all the internal committees so that nobody could brandish any official party position in front of people.

 

All this had been almost fully predicted. What is surprising is that even without any philosophical foundation, the TMC lasted for well more than two decades. Of course, power of the Government kept the party together. Some leaders did think in terms of offering the organisation some lasting values so it endures itself through thick and thin of politics. All those attempts got only a nominal nod -- since Ms. Mamata Banerjee never wanted the organisation to be run on correct and sound and enduring principles of management. Some political observers may accuse the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of having engineered a split in the TMC. But factually, the BJP had nothing to do with it since the TMC itself is inflicting deep wounds upon its own corpus.

 

Though the next few days would see intense struggle for control of the party in TMC, it is almost sure that Ms. Mamata Banerjee has lost her magnetism and ability to lead the party across factions. Even if she jettisons her nephew Mr. Abhishek Banerjee as her heir (which is only a rarest of the rare possibility), she will not be able to stitch the torn fabric of the party together again. Meanwhile, the common people of the country are realising the fast-track decision-making of the State Government headed by Chief Minister Mr. Suvendu Adhikari -- in sharp contrast of the sluggish work the Mamata Government often did even in critical areas of national interest. The country is now realising what West Bengal actually lost during the TMC regime of fifteen years. Even the TMC followers among public also are able to see the difference between the two regimes -- one of which is not even one month old. The current condition of the TMC only shows an early signal of its march to doom -- which looks so stark against the bright sunshine the Suvendu Adhikari Government has brought to West Bengal.