Mamata asks party seniors to work together, step aside differences

Amid growing factional tensions within the Trinamul Congress in Cooch Behar, party chief and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee intervened on Monday evening during her visit to the district after an administrative meeting.

According to party sources, Mamata Banerjee firmly instructed leaders to “respect seniors and ensure age is never treated as a barrier.” She summoned a group of district leaders to the Circuit House late at night to address the escalating feud between former North Bengal Development minister Rabindranath Ghosh and the incumbent minister Udayan Guha.

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At the closed-door meeting, attended by Rabindranath Ghosh, Udayan Guha, Cooch Behar MP Jagadish Chandra Barma Basunia, and other senior functionaries, Mamata Banerjee delivered a clear message: the ongoing clash between senior and junior leaders must end immediately, and the party must function collectively, said party sources.

The tension had escalated in recent days after Rabindranath Ghosh alleged that Udayan Guha and district TMC president Abhijit De Bhowmik were conspiring against him. Ghosh was also angered by remarks from a Trinamul leader — whose son was murdered a few months ago —suggesting that Ghosh was involved in the incident.

Although Abhijit De Bhowmik publicly dismissed the murder allegation against Ghosh, the former minister claimed that De Bhowmik, also known as ‘Hippy’, had engineered a plot to rally Trinamul councillors to bring a no-confidence motion against him, branding him an “incompetent” chairman of the Cooch Behar Municipality.

In the recent Lok Sabha elections, Trinamul held a narrow lead in five of Cooch Behar’s nine Assembly segments, while the BJP led in the remaining four. Political observers warn that if the internal rift deepens, the party—already on shaky ground in North Bengal—may face significant challenges in the upcoming Assembly polls.