Sushmita Dev exclusive: ‘TMC rebels have taken a huge risk’

Twenty Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha MPs have walked out of the party and merged with the little-known Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI) — but the debate over the ethics of political defection is far from settled.

As TMC loyalists accuse the rebels of opportunism and greed, a quieter, more consequential exit has gone relatively unnoticed. Former Trinamool leader Sushmita Dev has resigned from the party, vacated her Rajya Sabha seat, and joined no new party.

In this episode of AI With Sanket, The Federal spoke to Dev, who drew a sharp moral line that her fellow rebels have refused to cross. Edited exceprts:

You have been asked about your decision to leave the TMC many times. But simply — why, and why now?

I feel repetitive saying this again, but I'll say it once more. I was not worried when I saw the results on the 4th of May. I was deeply disappointed, of course, but that in itself was no reason for me to consider putting in my resignation.

What followed thereafter — the public reactions on the ground — was different. I was also a member of the fact-finding committee, so I travelled across several districts of Bengal to actually meet the workers of the party. I never imagined that the party would just fall apart so quickly, which precipitated a massive internal crisis.

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My politics is in Assam. I am not a Bengal politician. I was part of the Trinamool's national plan. And then, there was a meeting on the 8th of June with the INDIA bloc. I think the writing was on the wall for me. It was unfair of me to expect Mamata Banerjee to continue her national plan on a serious note, or to the extent I would like it to be. It seemed totally futile for my trajectory.

I am not blaming her at all. She is bound to focus on rejuvenating and turning the party around in Bengal. I didn't see a road map for myself ahead. The dignified thing to do was not just resign from the party, but also resign from the Rajya Sabha seat the party gave me.

That is something many of your colleagues have not done. Are you part of the new entity, the NCPI?

No, no. I am right now in no party. I am a former member of parliament. I am actually a free bird right now.

Many of your old colleagues have switched sides without giving up their positions. You gave up yours. Why have they not done the same?

The way I view it is through what I watch them saying on television or read in the papers. Clearly there was a lot of discontentment.

You spoke about Abhishek Manu Singhvi, and Mahua Moitra tweeted quoting him about the new NCPI party. But I can tell you — he started his submission by saying that he does not perceive it as a situation where the only reason the 20 Lok Sabha MPs left was coercion or some sort of incentive from the Bharatiya Janata Party.

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No politician in electoral politics — I can tell you from my personal experience — takes such a big step unless there are very good reasons. Today we may laugh at them, shame them, mock them. But you cannot deny the fact that they have taken a huge risk in what they have done.

But is it not opportunistic to suddenly discover that TMC is a one-woman party only after it has lost?

Being opportunistic also involves a great degree of risk. Your opportunism may or may not work.

That's what I started by saying — they have taken a huge risk. I get the feeling that when there was a meeting where all members of parliament were called, the buzz before we entered the room was that everybody would have a chance to say what they felt happened in the election, why the results were not in our favour, and how to do course correction. But it didn't happen. I thought that was the trigger.

I have read about the MLA meeting — that they were asked to give a standing ovation to Abhishek. And a big fear in people's heads is also: after Didi retires, what is the succession plan? Who is going to lead them?

A president was nominated by Mamata Banerjee — Chandrima Bhattacharya. Now I wonder if many of them would have stayed back if, hypothetically, someone like Mahua Moitra had been made the president of the party. It is a whole set of factors that led to this.

But you are the one being asked the morality question — you switched from Congress to TMC in 2021 yourself.

I was not holding any elected post at the time when I switched in 2021. I have given up the position I received from the party. With a clean conscience, I can tell people: I have not just resigned from the TMC, I have also resigned from the position the party gave me.

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But here is my question — the colleagues who are now taking the moral high ground, both of whom were very much an integral part of the team that worked in Goa in 2022, I would like to ask them: what did the Trinamool Congress do in the Goa election of 2022?

They went lock, stock and barrel with Prashant Kishor. They got Luizinho Faleiro — gave him a Rajya Sabha seat. They broke the only sitting MLA of the NCP, which is Sharad Pawar's party, and he merged into Trinamool. After that, a plethora of good candidates from the Congress were brought into the Trinamool Congress, and Mahua Moitra was one of the persons in charge of Goa. I wish you had asked her that question.

They went to Tripura and broke the entire Congress — Sudip Roy Barman and all — and merged them into Trinamool Congress. They went to Meghalaya and took two-thirds of the Congress MLAs and merged them into Trinamool Congress. Today they are giving us a moral lecture.

"Kya hua tera vaada?" — Kirti Azad tweeted that. And then you have Mahua Moitra screaming fire. I have seen her in action in Goa.

You have every right to disparage me. But please do not give me a moral lecture. I can give you a plethora of examples of how many MLAs, elected on the symbol of the Left and the Congress, that the Trinamool Congress broke between 2021 and 2026 in Bengal. It depends who is asking me the question.

Which is exactly why people are now saying the anti-defection law itself needs to change. What is your view?

I did not do what, say, the Aam Aadmi Party did in the Rajya Sabha — Raghav Chadha and others simply merged with the BJP. I chose to give it up.

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The anti-defection law should not apply to voting in parliament unless it is a money bill or a no-confidence motion. The law in 1985 was brought in to give stability to the government of the country — not to the party.

When the farm law was bulldozed — or when the BNS and the new IPC were bulldozed — if it is a vote of conscience, maybe many people in the BJP from Uttar Pradesh and Punjab would not have voted in favour of the farm laws. When the delimitation bill comes, if I am coming from Uttar Pradesh or Gujarat and I support it because I am not from the south of India, it should be a vote of conscience. Why should cross-voting leading to defection apply to every law?

But what about the voter — the last person standing — who voted for a symbol and an idea that has now been abandoned?

I do not deny that is an ideal situation. But then you will have to change the laws.

Today, anyone doing whatever — defection, cross-voting — is subject to the law as it stands. So let us all get together and change the law. The power of disqualification today lies with the Speaker. There are many views that say the Speaker should not be a partisan party member. There are different models across the world where the Speaker does not belong to any party. That is a debate we need to have.

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And if you are asking me to go back to the people for a referendum, then there should also be a law that holds leaders accountable if they do not follow their manifesto. You cannot ask me to go to referendum while they continue for five years with a corrupt government. It is a very complicated debate. It is not so easy.

And what about the 20 rebel MPs — should we give them the benefit of the doubt?

It is just a matter of time before the 20 Lok Sabha MPs also start giving one-to-one interviews to say that staying on may have impacted the interests of the people. Just because they have defected today, we are not giving them the benefit of the doubt.

This may have been their escape route from a suffocated situation. We do not know. Maybe they felt it was better to break away and work with the NDA government to deliver better. Give it time. Politics is very dynamic.

I know enough people who have defected, worked for a year as an MLA in Assam, then joined the BJP and come back with a thumping majority — because they delivered after they defected. There are many arguments that can go this way or that way. Let us not sit in moral judgement. Leave it to the courts. Let the Speaker decide. And the janta ki adalat (people's court) also.

(The content above has been transcribed from video using a fine-tuned AI model. To ensure accuracy, quality, and editorial integrity, we employ a Human-In-The-Loop (HITL) process. While AI assists in creating the initial draft, our experienced editorial team carefully reviews, edits, and refines the content before publication. At The Federal, we combine the efficiency of AI with the expertise of human editors to deliver reliable and insightful journalism.)