With several lawmakers leaving the Trinamool Congress, the party is facing an existential crisis. Lok Sabha MP Mahua Moitra insists that it is a good purification, and all rumours of the TMC dying are just the Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP)’s wishful thinking. She spoke to HT soon after news came of her colleague Sushmita Dev’s resigning. Edited excerpts:
Your first reaction to Sushmita Dev’s exit?
People are free. It’s a free country. She was in the Congress. She left the Congress and came to us. We gave her a Rajya Sabha (seat), not once, but twice. And for whatever reason... she’ll have to answer to that, as to why she’s gone. I’m not responsible for what she’s done. We have 13 Rajya Sabha MPs, of which Sukhendu Sekhar Roy resigned. And now Sushmita Dev has resigned. Let us see what happens, whether they come back as BJP MPs or the BJP fields somebody else in their space from Bengal.
You tweeted that 16 Lok Sabha MPs have gone over to the other side. Has that number now increased to 20 as they’re claiming?
They have 16, they have been claiming that they have 20. Now, the onus is on them. If they really had 20, I’m sure there would have been a letter out, there would have been signatures out, there would have been a joint press conference (with the BJP). I can categorically tell you that they don’t have 20 MPs. For (the) anti-defection (law) not to apply, two-thirds of not the legislative party, but the political party has to move away. And not only move away, they have to merge with the BJP. So a) you have to have two- thirds, not even 19, two-thirds of the political party, which they don’t have. b) Even if they did have 20, what would it get them? That you can sit aside (from the TMC). Apart from sitting aside, there is no room for any separate faction or block to be recognised in the Lok Sabha or in the Assembly. They are free to call themselves Kakoli Congress or Shatabdi Congress or BJP-B team in Bengal and sit aside. So they are welcome to sit aside and vote for the BJP. Nobody can stop that. But that’s the end of their Lok Sabha career.
{{/usCountry}}They have 16, they have been claiming that they have 20. Now, the onus is on them. If they really had 20, I’m sure there would have been a letter out, there would have been signatures out, there would have been a joint press conference (with the BJP). I can categorically tell you that they don’t have 20 MPs. For (the) anti-defection (law) not to apply, two-thirds of not the legislative party, but the political party has to move away. And not only move away, they have to merge with the BJP. So a) you have to have two- thirds, not even 19, two-thirds of the political party, which they don’t have. b) Even if they did have 20, what would it get them? That you can sit aside (from the TMC). Apart from sitting aside, there is no room for any separate faction or block to be recognised in the Lok Sabha or in the Assembly. They are free to call themselves Kakoli Congress or Shatabdi Congress or BJP-B team in Bengal and sit aside. So they are welcome to sit aside and vote for the BJP. Nobody can stop that. But that’s the end of their Lok Sabha career.
{{/usCountry}}The Opposition has always claimed that people are forced to quit their parties or join the BJP under pressure or the threat of investigating agencies. But a lot of the names there, for example, Sukhendu Sekhar Roy, there doesn’t seem to be any pending case against them?
Sukhendu Sekhar Roy is a political opportunist. Please understand, he was with the Congress. He was never with us. In 2011, when we came to power, he was Pranab Mukherjee’s man. He was not even the Congress’s man.
So when Pranabda could not give him a Rajya Sabha seat, he told Mamata Banerjee, I’m sending Sukhendu Sekhar to you, please give him a Rajya Sabha seat. If he felt that strongly about Mamata Banerjee, and he felt so strongly about RG Kar (the rape and murder of a doctor)...,it happened when? A year and a half ago, he should have resigned then.Why didn’t he? He went for a holiday to Kashmir. Does that count as going away?
Would you call Sushmita Dev a political opportunist?
You’ll have to ask her that question. Sushmita Dev is a friend of mine. I’m not going to say anything about her reasons. You’ll have to ask her yourself.
What is the mood within your party now?
In some ways, we’re actually happy because the shuddhi karan, the cleansing, is happening.
Mamata Di, for all her instincts, for all her leadership, is a deeply emotional person with a great deal of affection and long-lasting loyalties. In the BJP..., it’s ruthless. People like Lal Krishna Advani, people like Murali Manohar Joshi, people like Sushma Swaraj were absolutely cut out and put away. Mamata Di is not ruthless. So a lot of these completely useless, rude people who have ridden on Mamata Di’s tails for the past 15 years... she should have cut them away.
Is the mistake that Mamata Banerjee made that she continued to trust people who were perhaps sitting on the fence?
Yes, that’s the lesson. She goes out of her way to do all of these things because she’s come from the grassroots and she has this connect. Mamata Banerjee has built this party. She hasn’t inherited it. So you have to take the good, the bad, and the ugly along with her.
People like us have not left her because we are essentially anti-BJP. And we will never leave her.
Would you respond to this charge (nepotism) about Abhishek Banerjee, which is constantly coming up?
So everyone who follows cricket today believes that Jay Shah is there (in BCCI) because he’s... the smartest... Did Abhishek Banerjee get that first ticket in 2014 because he was Mamata Banerjee’s nephew? Yes, he did. But has he since then been elected thrice, been National General Secretary of our party and done organisational work for the party, traversed the state, built up an organisation? Yes, he has. He’s been there 12 years. He’s paid his dues. It’s not that he’s been parachuted from the top and sat at home and not done anything. I could have been a cynic. He’s much younger than me. I’ve accepted him as a national general secretary. I could have been a rebel and done what Suvendu did. Suvendu said I want to be the next person in command. As long as Abhishek is there, I will not get that spot. Hence, I will part ways. I will go to BJP. There’s a certain amount of clean, transparent way of doing that. I respect that. I have respect for Suvendu. I have a very good personal equation with him, which has never got spoilt. I have not been in touch with him since he left but he’s put his money where his mouth is. So why don’t any of these people? If any of these 60 MLAs had a problem with Abhishek, why did they not quit the party before the 2026 elections, join the BJP and win on a BJP ticket?
And this whole thing against IPAC?
What IPAC is doing today, I did, frankly, in the Congress party when I was an Aam Aadmi Ka Sipahi in 2008. They taught me booth-level organisation. But mass-based parties like the Trinamool, like the Congress, non-regimented parties are very slow, especially the old guard, are slow to do cadre building in an organised manner. So to do that, they brought in IPAC. Now I didn’t let IPAC do my 2024 election, I didn’t let them in; I did it myself.
There was no IPAC in the Krishnagar Lok Sabha constituency in the 2024 Lok Sabha. I still won even though it was a tough election. IPAC told me I was going to lose; I said I’m going to win and I won.
But not everyone has that training, that ability and a lot of the seniors don’t have that thing with Excel, with putting lists. And remember, we are competing against the BJP, which is a very organised, tech-savvy party, and they have unlimited resources where they can outsource everything. So, in order to do that and to help a lot of our seniors, who are not English-savvy or arithmetic-savvy, create a structure, it was necessary to bring them in. So of course, now when you bring something good in, how far do you let it go away with it? So yes, was there overreach? Yes, there may have been. But was it a good idea to bring them in, in order to streamline our systems? Yes, it was.