Mamata’s succession plan in place, new post being created for nephew

New Delhi: On 2 February, a generational change in the All India Trinamool Congress (AITMC) is likely to take place, with party general secretary and Member of Parliament, Abhishek Banerjee likely to be appointed as the party’s first National Working President. The said post has been added in the party’s new constitution that will be unveiled at an event in the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Indoor Stadium, Kolkata.
Political consulting group, Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC), which was engaged by the TMC to redraft the party’s new constitution, has, as per sources aware of developments, incorporated multiple changes in the new constitution so that the party’s outlook turns from that of a regional party to a “national party”. These changes include the creation of new posts at different levels to assist the party Chairperson.
However, the main talking point of this new constitution is the creation of the post of National Working President that has been brought into existence to turn the de facto position of Abhishek—who is the MP from Diamond Harbour and nephew of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee—widely accepted as the number two in the party, to a de-jure position. The said post will have a tenure of five years.
While party president Mamata Banerjee will continue to remain the chairperson of the party, post 2 February, the succession line of the TMC for the coming years will become formalised.
Even though the 67-year-old Banerjee is among the most active politicians of the country, she, by agreeing to create the post of Working President in the party, has ensured that once she decides to quit active politics, which party sources believe would be post the 2024 general elections when she will be 70 years old, there will be no internal fight on who would carry forward her legacy in the state and at the national level. Apart from handling the 2021 West Bengal Assembly elections, Abhishek is leading the party’s expansion plans in states like Tripura and Goa. It was he, who had conjured, despite Mamata Banerjee’s initial hesitancy, a relationship between TMC and I-PAC in the late 2019, when the TMC could not stop the BJP from winning 18 Lok Sabha seats in the state in the 2021 general elections.
At the time, political pundits had predicted that the TMC was unlikely to retain power in the March-April 2021 elections due to the surging popularity of the BJP in the state. However, nothing of that sort happened, with the TMC re-emerging as the most popular party in the state, while winning 215 of the 292 seats that went to polls.
As reported by this newspaper earlier, the party is already witnessing differences among senior leaders like Derek O’Brien on one side and I-PAC founder, Prashant Kishor on the other. Kishor, TMC sources said, has angered a section of TMC leaders, who have been with the party for decades, by using his perceived closeness to Abhishek Banerjee to either bypass or attempt to bypass their decisions. The I-PAC has denied the existence of any such rift.
According to a Kolkata based TMC functionary, who is considered to be from the anti-Abhishek camp, Mamata Banerjee’s nephew is creating his own line of leaders in the state and once he assumes the position of the second most important man in the party post 2 February, he will formalise the appointments of these leaders by replacing the existing leaders, most of whom belong to the “old school” of TMC and have been with the party since 1998, when it was founded.
This has led to concerns among TMC’s old guard, who fear that by the time 2024 arrives they will be “considerably marginalised” as the Abhishek-backed leaders get prominence in a generational churn.
“Mamata Banerjee has ensured that the takeover of the party by Abhishek will happen smoothly. There will be few dissenting voices, some of the more upset ones might join the BJP but in all, I don’t expect any major rumblings in the party until Mamata Banerjee is there. TMC is where it is because of her and not because of the other ‘senior’ leaders and this is something that almost all the top leadership of TMC accepts,” a senior TMC leader stated.