Kolkata: The opening session of the Bengal assembly on Thursday laid bare the divisions within Trinamool Congress, with rival factions occupying separate sections of the opposition benches. Around 38 MLAs were seated alongside Leader of Opposition (LoP) Ritabrata Banerjee and senior rebel netas such as Sandipan Saha. Another group of 14 legislators, including Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay, Madan Mitra, Kunal Ghosh, Rukbanur Rahman and Alifa Ahmed, sat separately in another part of the opposition enclosure.
The presence of former minister Firhad Hakim, once considered among Mamata Banerjee's closest associates, in the Ritabrata camp drew attention. The seating arrangement offered one of the clearest indications yet that the battle for control of Trinamool has moved into the legislature. Ritabrata claimed: "Out of 80 MLAs, 65 are with us. Of the remaining 15, one is in jail. For the time being, 14 are on the other side."
Five MLAs aligned with Mamata Banerjee met Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari later in the day. After the meeting, Kunal Ghosh said: "We will be a constructive opposition. We will do it with dignity. We are not doing undignified politics of winning on our party's ticket and then betraying it to get a chair through the back door by the mercy of the BJP's speaker."
He added: "The CM is allocating a separate room in the assembly for the section led by Trinamool's Sobhandeb. We will get time to speak in discussions and debates. During our meeting, the CM called parliamentary affairs minister Shankar Ghosh and instructed him accordingly."
Ghosh also said Chattopadhyay, the senior-most MLA in the Mamata camp, had been accorded prominence in the seating plan. "Today, we saw the CM occupying his designated seat. The seat traditionally associated with the leader of the opposition was allotted to Chattopadhyay, while Ritabrata's seat was elsewhere," he said.
Ritabrata rejected the claim. "The LoP's seat has been fixed since 1957. Jyoti Basu sat in that particular seat for 10 years. After him, every LoP has occupied the same seat. Surjya Kanta Mishra sat there... Now Suvendu Adhikari, the present CM, also occupied that seat earlier. Abdul Mannan sat there as well. Yesterday, the assembly secretariat categorically stated that this seat belongs to the LoP. Therefore, I sat in that particular seat," he said.
Ghosh reiterated that the Mamata camp did not recognise Ritabrata as legislature party leader or accept the rebel MLAs. "Those who stab the party in the back through unethical means cannot be accepted," he said, alleging that several rebel legislators had acted under pressure. "The rebel MLAs have not gone to the other camp willingly; they were pressured. I too was contacted."
