Mamata blames Congress, AAP for BJP’s Delhi victory, rules out alliance for 2026
TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee said the AAP did not help Congress in the Haryana polls and the Congress did not help AAP in the Delhi polls
Kolkata: Trinamool Congress (TMC) chairperson and West Bengal chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, on Monday blamed the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress for failure of the opposition to win election in Delhi and Haryana and ruled out the possibility of having any alliance with the Congress for 2026 Bengal assembly polls.
She also sent a strong message to her legislators and ministers saying only she will take organisational decisions in the party, those who attended the closed-door meeting held before the inauguration of the assembly budget session said.
Ruling out an alliance with Congress or any other party, Banerjee also told the gathering that TMC will win the 2026 Bengal state polls on its own with two-third majority in the 294-member assembly.
“The chief minister said AAP did not help Congress in the Haryana polls and Congress did not help AAP in the Delhi polls. She said such things are unacceptable. She said Congress doesn’t exist in Bengal,” a minister said.
“Didi (Banerjee) sounded a warning, saying she will not tolerate infighting and factionalism in the TMC’s rank and file. She picked out a couple of MLAs and ministers saying they may have apologised after making some controversial statements in public but apologies will not be accepted over and over again,” an MLA from south Bengal said on condition of anonymity.
“She gave some important responsibilities to power minister Aroop Biswas, her old follower. She said she will completely reshuffle the party’s units from state to polling booth level as well as the student and youth fronts and select new office-bearers. She asked the MLAs to recommend three names for each post to Biswas,” the MLA added.
Although it is public knowledge that the Bengal chief minister’s nephew and TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee is seen as the second-in-command in the party, Banerjee surprised her leaders on Monday saying she has no family.
“She said she has no family and the party and the people are her family,” a second MLA said.
“We were earlier informed that Abhishek had already sent his recommendations on these upcoming committees to Didi. These recommendations are based on surveys done by I-PAC (Indian Political Action Committee), which was hired by our party in 2019. Does it mean Didi does not want I-PAC’s services? Nothing is clear,” he added.
Banerjee held the meeting at a time when the talking point in TMC is the ongoing tussle between old-timers who left Congress when she formed TMC in 1998 and younger leaders who are counted among followers of Abhishek Banerjee.
“Didi made it clear that she values the old-timers. Referring to former food minister Jyotipriya Mallick, who recently got bail in the ration scam case, she said he unnecessarily suffered in judicial custody for two-and-a-half years but the federal agencies could not produce any evidence to prosecute him,” a second MLA said.
The development comes days after Madan Mitra, a legislator and an old loyalist of Mamata Banerjee, made several controversial remarks before two Bengali news channels accusing I-PAC, a poll management company founded by Prashant Kishor, of tarnishing her image and raising money from party leaders seeking election tickets and plum posts.
He also claimed that Abishek Banerjee, who played the key role in hiring I-PAC, is not as great a leader as his aunt.
“Money never changed hands in our party till this agency arrived. Many people who sought election tickets told me that they gave anything between ₹25 to 50 lakh to the I-PAC people,” Mitra told one of the channels, triggering a row in the run-up to next year’s assembly polls.
“Money, running into crores, are taken for plum posts including ministerial berths,” Mitra also said. He apologised to the party last Wednesday for this specific remark.
Banerjee pulled up Mitra at the meeting on Monday and said only official party spokespersons will talk to the media from now on, those who attended the meeting said.
No TMC leader commented on record on Mamata Banerjee’s remarks.
Bengal Congress spokesperson Soumya Aich Roy said: “If Mamata Banerjee was so concerned about prospects of the Congress in Delhi polls then why didn’t she have a word with Arvind Kejriwal? She need not worry about us.”
Bengal BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari said: “Mamata Banerjee has ousted BJP from the Centre several times in her dreams. She learnt her lesson by contesting the Goa and Tripura polls. We will see how she wins in 2026.”