Trinamool Congress's Ashis Banerjee was found dead at a party office in Birbhum district near his residence in Rampurhat on Sunday morning. He allegedly died by suicide as the police said a suicide note had been recovered from the spot.
A five-time MLA, Ashis was the deputy speaker in Bengal assembly during TMC's last stint before the Mamata Banerjee-led party's 15-year-long run in power was ended by the BJP's landslide win in May this year.
Locals informed the police about the death after they found Ashis's dead body hanging inside the TMC office. A handwritten suicide note in Bengali was also recovered from the room, a police official told HT.
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Describing Ashis's death as sad and shocking, TMC spokesperson Nilanjan Das shared an image of the purported suicide note on X in which Ashis hinted at being falsely implicated in corruption cases.
Who was Ashis Banerjee?
Seventy-five-year-old Ashis was a five-time TMC MLA and had joined politics when he was a student at Burdwan University. Although he was an associate lecturer of Bengali at Rampurhat College, he won the Rampurhat assembly seat five times in a row from 2001 to 2021. He also served as a state agriculture minister in Mamata Banerjee’s cabinet and was the assembly’s deputy speaker from 2021 until May 2026.
{{/usCountry}}Seventy-five-year-old Ashis was a five-time TMC MLA and had joined politics when he was a student at Burdwan University. Although he was an associate lecturer of Bengali at Rampurhat College, he won the Rampurhat assembly seat five times in a row from 2001 to 2021. He also served as a state agriculture minister in Mamata Banerjee’s cabinet and was the assembly’s deputy speaker from 2021 until May 2026.
{{/usCountry}}The Bharatiya Janata Party, which swept the Bengal assembly polls in May, recently alleged that financial corruption had been detected at the Tarapith Rampurhat Development Authority (TRDA) and Banerjee was involved in it.
TMC MP Samirul Islam described Ashis as the ‘most honest and highly educated person in Birbhum’.
“Many people joined politics inspired by him. According to his suicide note, probably his name was maligned by the opposition party. This is a loss not just to Birbhum but to the entire West Bengal... An investigation should be held on the basis of the suicide note,” Samirul said.
The TMC MLA had resigned from the post of chairman of party's Birbhum district core committee in June this year, weeks after the Mamata Banerjee-led party faced crushing defeat at the hands of the BJP in assembly elections.
He contested the 2026 Assembly elections from Rampurhat on a TMC ticket but lost to BJP's Dhruva Saha by more than 24,000 votes.
“I sought his blessings after winning the seat. He did not appear to be a person who would die by suicide,” Saha said after Ashis's death.