KOLKATA, WEST BENGAL – To quickly deal with problems inside her party, West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Mamata Banerjee has named her nephew, Abhishek Banerjee, as the party’s new Lok Sabha in-charge. This decision comes at a time when two of the party’s most important MPs, Mahua Moitra and Kalyan Banerjee, are having a public fight that is getting worse.
TMC MPs met online to choose Abhishek Banerjee as the party’s national general secretary and as the party’s leader. Party sources say that the action was a direct response to the lack of cooperation and the public fight within the party’s parliamentary unit. Sudip Bandopadhyay, the floor leader of the Lok Sabha, was there, but Mamata Banerjee chose to give the job to her nephew. Later, Mamata Banerjee acknowledged on X that the decision was made because Sudip Bandopadhyay was sick and that all of the MPs agreed on it.
The Public Feud: A “Pig” Insult and a Resignation
The new round of public fighting between Mahua Moitra and Kalyan Banerjee was what led to this shift of leadership. The fight, which had been going on for months, got worse when Moitra was asked about Kalyan’s inflammatory comments during the 2024 Lok Sabha campaign in a recent interview. Moitra said, “You don’t wrestle with a pig because then you get dirty,” and she called some members of Parliament “deeply misogynistic and sexually frustrated.”
Kalyan Banerjee, the party’s chief whip in the Lok Sabha, publicly responded to Moitra on X, saying that she used “dehumanizing language” and showed “deep disregard for basic norms of civil discourse.” He also said he will step down as chief whip because he was being unfairly criticized for MPs not working together well, even though some of them seldom ever went to Parliament. Kalyan says that Abhishek Banerjee has since phoned him and requested him to wait on his resignation so they may talk about it more. It looks like Mamata Banerjee has also put Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar in charge of daily coordination.
A Record of Public Fights
There has been a disagreement between the two MPs for a long time. In April, the two had a furious fight outside the Election Commission of India office, with Moitra reportedly demanding CISF officers to arrest Kalyan. In June, the fight resumed when Moitra challenged Kalyan for what he said about a gang-rape case. Kalyan then made a personal statement about her marriage. Kalyan’s recent comments on X made it clear that he thinks Moitra’s public insults are a way to “mask her own failures” and “distract from serious questions about her record.”
People think that the party’s high command is trying to bring discipline and unity to the parliamentary team by making Abhishek Banerjee the head of the Lok Sabha unit. It makes him a critical decision-maker and the party’s representation in Delhi, especially because veteran stalwarts like Sudip Bandopadhyay and Saugata Roy are having health problems.