Abhishek relieved from National General Secretary post; PK suspected behind rift.
New Delhi: The internal feud between the TMC old guard and “party number two” Abhishek Banerjee may appear to have reached a compromise on Saturday evening, but this compromise is likely to be the proverbial lull before the storm which is likely to arise after 14 February when Goa votes. The Goa poll campaign of TMC is being entirely handled by Abhishek with TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee virtually disassociating herself from the campaign.
If the party does well there, then it will embolden the Abhishek camp to take what his close associates have described as a “big step” which can be as big as the nephew doing what Akhilesh Yadav did in January 2017 by staging an internal political coup against his father or what Pashupati Paras did to Chirag Paswan in June last year; emerging as the number one of their respective party.
Abhishek, who was expected to be formally anointed as number two in the party by way of being named as the party’s first National Working President on 2 February, was on Saturday relieved from the position of National General Secretary, a step that was taken, according to TMC sources, by Mamata on the advice of the old guard who feel that Abhishek, under the influence of political manager Prashant Kishor, had become “overly ambitious”. Kishor was brought by Abhishek to strengthen the TMC but now he stands accused of encouraging Abhishek to take control of the party. This has led to the old guard accusing Kishor of denting the party from within.
The fallout between Prashant Kishor and the Trinamool Congress has not come as a surprise to those who have followed the former’s professional graph. Kishor has a history of ending ties with almost all the political parties he and his political strategy company I-PAC have worked with on a bad note.
Kishor began his career as a poll manager in 2013 when, as per his claims, he helped the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi with their campaign for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. However, soon after the 2014 results, he fell out with the BJP.
Similarly, his stint with the Congress and the Samajwadi Party for which Kishor and his I-PAC worked in the 2016 Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, also ended on a bad note as even before the elections were over, PK left the campaign of both the parties.
Since then, PK is not “trusted” by the Congress or the Samajwadi Party. Last year, following the declaration of the election results for West Bengal in May, Kishor had initiated some rounds of talks with the Congress, reportedly to join the party. Sources in the Congress say that Kishor was turned down by the Congress because he was demanding a senior position in the party.
Even with the JDU and Nitish Kumar, with whom Kishor had worked for the Bihar Assembly elections, he parted ways following differences. PK had joined the JDU in 2018 and was made the national vice president of the party, but his differences with the JDU and Nitish Kumar started to surface in 2019 when the Citizenship Amendment Act was passed in the Parliament. Kishor had openly criticised JDU for taking a stand in favour of CAA. He was later suspended by the party.
His association with former Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had also soured during the later days of Singh’s stint as the Chief Minister of Punjab and Kishor had broken all ties with Singh.
Now, PK and his I-PAC are on their way to part ways with the Trinamool Congress for which he and his company was supposed to be engaged till 2026. Prashant Kishor was engaged by the Trinamool Congress and more specifically Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee soon after the 2019 Lok Sabha elections when the TMC lost about 18 Lok Sabha seats to the BJP. Kishor was handed the job of making the TMC win the 2021 West Bengal Assembly elections, which PK and his team delivered. Soon after this, the contract between PK and the TMC was extended for another five years, till 2026. Political observers and TMC insiders say that it is PK and his team at I-PAC that were instrumental in launching the TMC in Tripura and Goa. It is also said by I-PAC insiders that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s national ambition for 2024 was also set by Prashant Kishor.
However, Kishor and the TMC started to have differences since the beginning of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation election held earlier last year. TMC sources say that Kishor wanted to be involved in the selection of candidates for the Kolkata Municipal Corporation elections, to which the TMC leadership, including Mamata Banerjee, took this action of PK and his I-PAC as an overture in the mandate given to I-PAC and PK by the TMC. TMC leaders told this correspondent that Kishor started to “meddle” in the internal matters of the party and “push” himself and the I-PAC as the decision-making power centre in the TMC.
Such acts did not go down well with the TMC leadership and the gap between the old guard of the TMC and PK and his team of young TMC leaders and I-PAC started to surface in the open, with many senior leaders like Derek O’Brien, Madan Mitra, Kalyan Bandyopadhyay criticising Kishor.
The rift between the TMC and Kishor widened when a list of TMC candidates for the 108 municipalities was uploaded on the official page of the TMC on Facebook earlier this week, allegedly by Kishor’s team in I-PAC, causing massive uproar among TMC local leaders across West Bengal.
Mamata Banerjee had to come in to control the damage for her party and a separate list prepared by TMC’s West Bengal state president Subrata Bakshi and Partha Chatterjee was later released from the TMC headquarters in Kolkata.
Mamata Banerjee, addressing reporters on Tuesday, said that the list released by Bakshi and Chatterjee was the authentic list of candidates of the TMC for municipal elections in Bengal and that the one released by I-PAC was not official.
The differences between I-PAC and TMC have also allegedly created rifts between Mamata Banerjee and her nephew and number two in command of the TMC, Abhishek Banerjee. Abhishek Banerjee is believed to have complete trust on the working of I-PAC and Kishor since Kishor delivered the West Bengal Assembly to the kitty of the TMC despite facing massive anti-incumbency on the ground.
However, the Mamata Banerjee camp believes that Kishor is crossing the mandate of the contract given to him and his political strategy company I-PAC, by enforcing political decisions on behalf of the party. Many leaders close to Mamata Banerjee have said that Kishor and his team are a group of consultants and should only remain that way.
However, sources close to Abhishek Banerjee believe that PK and his team are taking the right decisions for the party by portraying the younger generation as the future of the party. Abhishek Banerjee also went ahead with the list of names put out by I-PAC for the municipal elections in Bengal at least in his Lok Sabha constituency of Diamond Harbour, “rejecting” the list prepared and put out by Subrata Bakshi and Partha Chatterjee.
Following this major tussle between the TMC and I-PAC, Prashant Kishor has allegedly informed the TMC supremo that he and his team would no longer want to work with the TMC in Goa, Tripura, Meghalaya and West Bengal to which Mamata Banerjee has replied as “Thank You”. The official media group of the TMC handled by I-PAC to send out official communications of the TMC has also stopped sending any messages. The last message received by the group was on 6 February. The activity in the group started to go down on 4 February, after I-PAC released the list of TMC candidates for 108 municipalities of West Bengal on the same day.