By Sujit Bhar
When the All India Trinamool Congress lost the 2026 West Bengal assembly election and was reduced to 80 seats, there was an initial school of thought that Mamata Banerjee, being the fighter that she has always been, would reorganise the party and perhaps return stronger from the defeat.
Then came the unthinkable.
A rebellion led by Ritabrata Banerjee, a CPI(M)-expelled wheeler-dealer, gathered extraordinary support inside the legislature party. In June, 58 MLAs signed a letter backing him as leader of the opposition, while reports put the rebel strength at about 60 of the 80 Trinamool Congress MLAs. The Speaker subsequently recognised Ritabrata as leader of the opposition.
The rebellion changed the nature of Bengal politics. What had begun as an electoral defeat became a battle over who actually represented the Trinamool Congress. And then came the Election Commission.
On September 17, the Election Commission barred both rival factions from using the name All India Trinamool Congress and the party’s traditional flowers and grass symbol in the Nandigram and Rejinagar by-elections. The Commission said it was dealing with competing claims to the identity of the party and, because the dispute could not be finally resolved before the by-elections, it was taking an interim course.
The next day, the Commission gave the two groups separate identities. Mamata’s faction became the “Mamata All India Trinamool Congress” with the football player symbol (a khela hobe fallback in memory). The rival faction received the name “Democratic Trinamool Congress” and the envelope symbol. Both were to be treated as recognised political parties for the relevant elections.
On paper, this may look like an administrative solution to a party dispute. However, politics is not conducted on paper alone.
WIPING OUT AN IDENTITY
For nearly three decades, “Trinamool Congress” and the twin-flower-and-grass symbol have represented one of Bengal’s principal political organisations. The question, therefore, is much larger than which symbol appears beside a candidate’s name in a by-election. It is whether an Election Commission can, even temporarily, remove a political party’s established electoral identity from the ballot.
Does the Election Commission have that moral right? The question of a “moral right” is different from the question of legal power.
The Election Commission is not supposed to protect a political party, just as it is not supposed to destroy one. Its constitutional responsibility is to supervise elections fairly. Article 324 gives it superintendence, direction and control over elections, while the Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968, gives it a specific mechanism for dealing with rival factions of recognised parties.
The Supreme Court has recognised this power. Paragraph 15 of the Symbols Order allows the Commission, when rival groups claim to be the same recognised political party, to hear the competing sides and determine which group, if any, represents the recognised party. Courts have also recognised that the Commission possesses substantial constitutional authority in this area.
That, however, does not mean that every exercise of that power automatically becomes legitimate in the public eye.
The Commission is an election referee. Its authority ultimately depends upon the contestants and voters believing that the referee is neutral. And this is where the present Bengal controversy becomes particularly serious.
The Election Commission is already facing an unusually high level of public and political scrutiny over the 2026 electoral process and the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. An investigation by The Indian Express reported that two of the three Election Commissioners had objected repeatedly (14 times in 10 months) to certain decisions connected with the SIR process. Mamata has subsequently demanded criminal proceedings against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, making allegations of systemic manipulation. Those are political allegations, not established findings of guilt.
At the same time, the Election Commission has told the Supreme Court that 27.16 lakh names were removed during the Bengal SIR process and that more than 22 lakh of those affected had appealed for inclusion. The Commission has defended the process and said the deletions included absentee, shifted, dead and duplicate entries.
This background matters.
NOT JUST CORRECT, BUT TRANSPARENT TOO
An Election Commission exercising enormous constitutional power must not merely be legally correct. It must also be demonstrably transparent.
The moral question, therefore, is not whether the Commission likes or dislikes Mamata or the Trinamool Congress. It is whether the Commission has given the public enough evidence to believe that its intervention is strictly electoral and not political.
That distinction is crucial.
How much legality does the decision have? Here the position is considerably more complicated than the political rhetoric suggests.
The Commission unquestionably has jurisdiction over election symbols. The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognised the special role of the Commission in resolving disputes between rival factions of recognised parties. The courts have also recognised that registration of a political party under Section 29A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, and allocation of election symbols under the Symbols Order operate in related but distinct fields.
Therefore, it would be wrong to say that the Election Commission simply has no legal power to intervene in the Trinamool Congress dispute. But there is another question: did it exercise that power correctly in this particular case?
That question cannot be answered merely by pointing to Article 324.
AN INTERIM ARRANGEMENT
The Commission’s own order, reportedly, treats the freeze as an interim arrangement because the rival claims could not be finally settled before the by-elections. That is important. It means the September decision is not necessarily a final judicial determination that Mamata’s organisation has ceased to be the Trinamool Congress. It is an electoral arrangement for the immediate contest.
That distinction could become central before the Supreme Court. Mamata has already challenged the freezing of the party name and symbol before the Supreme Court.
The legal battle can, therefore, examine several questions: whether the Commission had sufficient material to conclude that there were genuinely competing claims to the party’s identity; whether the rival groups were given adequate opportunity to present their cases; whether the interim arrangement was proportionate to the immediate electoral problem; and whether denying the established name and symbol to both factions was necessary to prevent voter confusion.
There is also a larger constitutional question.
The Supreme Court has previously observed that the power to resolve symbol disputes was entrusted to the Election Commission on the presumption that such power would be exercised fairly and reasonably.
That is an important principle. Power is not the same thing as unlimited discretion.
AND THEN CAME NANDIGRAM
The timing of the next development has made an already complicated situation even more politically charged.
Mamata withdrew her faction’s candidate from Nandigram and announced support for Congress candidate Milan Pradhan. Hours later, Pradhan was arrested in connection with cases dating back to the 2007 Nandigram land-acquisition agitation.
The police position is that the arrest was based on pending non-bailable warrants involving serious allegations, including murder, attempted murder, abduction and rioting. Pradhan was subsequently sent to judicial custody.
The timing immediately produced political allegations that the law was being used to interfere with the electoral contest. The state and police position, on the other hand, is that the warrants predated the election and were legally enforceable.
There is now an important judicial development. On September 24, the Calcutta High Court directed that Pradhan should not be treated as arrested in one of the 2007 cases and restrained further police action against him until October 12. The state has challenged that order before a division bench.
That does not establish that the original arrest was politically motivated. But it does show why timing, procedure and judicial scrutiny matter enormously in an election.
When an Opposition candidate is arrested immediately after receiving support from another Opposition party, the public is entitled to ask questions. Equally, the existence of political timing does not by itself invalidate a criminal case.
Evidence, warrants, procedure and judicial orders have to decide the issue.
WHAT IS MAMATA’S FUTURE?
The future of Mamata cannot responsibly be predicted from the present turmoil. But the political choices before her are visible.
First, she has to fight the legal battle over the Trinamool Congress’ name and symbol. That battle is already before the Supreme Court.
Second, she has to deal with the fact that a very large section of her own legislators backed the rebellion. That cannot be repaired merely by winning a court case.
Third, she has to preserve the organisation outside the assembly. A political party is not only its MLAs. It is workers, local leaders, district organisations, elected representatives, supporters and voters.
Fourth, she has to decide whether the immediate political battle should be fought entirely in the Trinamool Congress’ name or through wider Opposition cooperation. Her decision to support the Congress candidate in Nandigram suggests that, at least on that contest, she has been prepared to work across party lines.
There is also an unavoidable question of leadership. For years, the Trinamool Congress and Mamata have been almost inseparable political identities. The present crisis tests whether that equation remains intact when a substantial section of elected representatives claims that the organisation can exist without her control.
That is ultimately a political question, not an Election Commission question.
The Commission can decide who gets a symbol for an election. A court can decide whether an order is lawful. Neither can manufacture public confidence in a political party.
MAMATA’S REAL BATTLE
Mamata’s real battle, therefore, is larger than the football player symbol and larger than the traditional flowers and grass symbol. It is whether the organisation she created in 1998 can survive its first great internal battle without losing its identity.
And there is an equally important question for the Election Commission. If it wants the country to believe that it is merely protecting the integrity of elections, it must demonstrate that every extraordinary intervention is based on transparent procedure, consistent standards and reasons capable of surviving judicial scrutiny.
The Election Commission cannot be expected to protect political parties from their own internal rebellions. But neither can an electoral referee afford to create the impression that, in settling a party dispute, it has itself become part of the political dispute.
That is why the Trinamool Congress crisis is no longer merely about Mamata. It is about the limits of electoral power, the meaning of political identity and, ultimately, how much confidence Indian voters can place in the institution that conducts their elections.
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