TMC collapse deepens as Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar exits all party posts citing ‘troubled conscience’

Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee may be desperately trying to retain her relevance in national politics by trying to get the INDIA bloc together again and by offering support publicly to the satirical Cockroach Janta Party, but perhaps the more pressing need is to devote some attention to her own party that seems to be crumbling like a house of cards.

Party MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, a physician, one of the TMC’s key faces in parliament, and a close aide of Mamata’s, dealt a body blow to the party on Wednesday (May 27) by resigning from her post as the president of the All India Trinamool Mahila Congress, the party’s women’s wing, and all other organisational posts within the party.

Resignation from party posts, not the party

Significantly, the four-time MP from Barasat resigned as the party’s Barasat parliamentary district president on Monday (May 25) and conspicuously showed up at an administrative meeting chaired by BJP Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari in Kalyani the day after. Three TMC MLAs also attended the meeting along with her.

Also read: TMC meltdown continues in Bengal as BJP wrests Falta: 'Trinamool will fight NOTA'

While she claimed that it was an administrative meeting and all “the administration belongs to everyone”, Adhikari had claimed after the meeting that the TMC MP had told him that she had “finally got freedom”, a remark that added to the political buzz around her presence at the event.

Ghosh Dastidar will not quit the party, though, at least not immediately. “I want to state clearly that this decision is not driven by any personal grievance or resentment. Rather, I am taking this decision out of my moral responsibility towards the party, democracy, and public life. However, I am not leaving the party. As an ordinary worker of the All India Trinamool Congress, I will continue my commitment to stand beside people and work in the interest of Bengal,” read her letter to Subrata Bakshi, the state president of the party.

Dig at Kalyan Banerjee

In the letter, she began by lashing out at “the inappropriate behaviour of another educated MP towards women MPs”, clearly an allusion to Kalyan Banerjee, the party’s Serampore MP who has made multiple headlines for his temper, including his spat with firebrand TMC MP Mahua Moitra and bottle-smashing episode during a parliamentary committee meeting on the Waqf Amendment Bill in 2024.

The lawyer-politician was reinstated as the party chief whip in Lok Sabha, replacing Kakoli after the party’s rout in the recent assembly elections. “...During my tenure, it has not been possible to stop the inappropriate behaviour of another educated MP towards women MPs, nor has adequate cooperation or empathy been received from the higher leadership. Remaining in such a position no longer holds meaning,” read Ghosh Dastidar’s letter.

Also read: After Mamata's fortress falls in Bengal, can TMC MPs keep party flag flying?

The MP had earlier made her displeasure over the rejig clear in an X post. “I have known Mamata Banerjee since 1976 and have been working together since 1984. Today, I got the prize for my four-decade-long loyalty.”

Burdened by ‘troubled conscience’

She also claimed that her “conscience has been troubled” by “several serious allegations” made over the past decade.

“Corruption in ration distribution, corruption in teacher recruitment, and various financial and administrative irregularities have created deep anger and distrust among ordinary people. In addition, the unnatural death of a female doctor at RG Kar Medical College and the allegations of evidence tampering surrounding the incident have shaken and distressed society. I have personally felt the moral impact of these incidents very deeply,” the letter went on.

Interestingly, her conscience has been troubled only now, even though these incidents are several months or years old. Before her, fellow party leaders and former MP Jawhar Sircar also flagged concerns over alleged financial irregularities, administrative mismanagement, and the party’s “reign of terror” in an interview to news agency PTI.

I-PAC, the scapegoat

Ghosh Dastidar also blasted I-PAC, the poll consultancy group launched by Prashant Kishor which has turned out to be the TMC’s scapegoat after the electoral bashing.

“Similarly, multiple disturbing allegations involving I-PAC, including the influence of various individuals and groups, have troubled me continuously. I believe that if opaque and undemocratic influences gradually dominate the organization instead of democratic political culture, it cannot be considered beneficial for the party’s ideals and traditions,” the MP wrote in her resignation letter.

Also read: TMC denied me ticket after I refused to pay Rs 5 crore: Ex-cricketer Manoj Tiwary

Her resignation comes as a big blow to the TMC, as Ghosh Dastidar was known to have a firm grip over the party organisation in North 24-Parganas district in South Bengal, a TMC stronghold even two years ago. However, this time, the party won only two of the seven seats falling under the Barasat Lok Sabha seat, and Ghosh Dastidar took the “moral responsibility” for the defeat while resigning as the party’s parliamentary district president on Monday.

Municipal-level collapse

The post-election unravelling has been triggering mass defections, internal blame games, and an institutional collapse of the TMC across the state. The structural collapse is most visible at the municipal level, where over 100 municipal councillors have resigned already.

In Bhatpara Municipality, 30 out of 35 councillors, including the chairperson, has resigned; in North Barrackpore, 16 councillors, including the chairman, resigned citing “moral responsibility”; in Halisahar and Kanchrapara, mass resignations have heavily disrupted civic boards; in Mirik, senior party leader Lal Bahadur Rai resigned along with the entire sub-divisional committee, virtually erasing the TMC’s presence in the Darjeeling Hills.

Also read: Thin turnout exposes disconnect in TMC’s first major post-defeat protest

But the worst possibly has been the collapse of the “Diamond Harbour Model”. In a repoll, the BJP’s Debangshu Panda won the Falta seat by a staggering margin of over 1.09 lakh votes in a fortress where TMC National General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee commanded massive majorities. The TMC candidate Jahangir Khan pulled out of the race, and the party plummeted to fourth place with a meagre 3.7 per cent votes.

Party leaders eyeing BJP switch

While Kalyan Banerjee has been partly blamed by Ghosh Dastidar, he pointed figures directly at Abhishek’s centralized style of functioning for disconnecting the party from its traditional grassroots workers. The shattering of the party cohesion is so overwhelming that it has left it vulnerable to a complete split.

Also read: Mamata fights a three-fold battle as TMC faces existential crisis

BJP MP Saumitra Khan has claimed that 50 TMC MLAs and nearly 20 Lok Sabha MPs are in talks to switch allegiances to the BJP. While senior TMC figures like Sougata Roy have dismissed these claims as “absolutely bogus”, the poor attendance at recent TMC legislative protests—where only 36 out of the 80 remaining MLAs showed up—indicates deep anxiety and fracturing within the party ranks.

The BJP won a landslide victory with 208 seats to end Mamata Banerjee’s 15-year reign in the 2026 West Bengal Assembly elections, pushing her party into the present crisis.