NOT POSSIBLE TO WORK IN TMC, SAYS ADHIKARI

KOLKATA: The Trinamool Congress (TMC) was thrown back into in a crisis on Wednesday when rebel legislator Suvendu Adhikari informed the leadership a day after peace talks that it was not possible for him to work in the party, people aware of the matter said.

Adhikari wrote in a text message to Lok Sabha member Saugata Roy that the problems he was battling in the TMC were far from over, the people said, requesting anonymity. He did not take calls from the media or respond to text messages.

Less than 14 hours earlier, the TMC said Adhikari had told top leaders at a discreetly held meeting on Tuesday evening that he would not leave the party. Roy had called up chief minister Mamata Banerjee in the middle of the meeting and handed over the phone to Adhikari. “She told him that we all must work together and he agreed,” Roy said on Wednesday.

Significantly, the chief minister’s nephew and Lok Sabha member, Abhishek Banerjee, and election strategist Prashant Kishor were present at the meeting along with Roy and Lok Sabha member Sudip Bandopadhyay. Senior TMC leaders told HT last month that Adhikari was specifically unhappy with organisational decisions taken by Abhishek Banerjee and Kishor, who was enlisted after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 18 of the state’s 42 Lok Sabha seats in 2019, emerging as the ruling party’s main challenger.

Adhikari, who was earlier appointed election observer for several districts, including Murshidabad, had demanded that leaders of his choice be fielded next year from around 65 of the 294 assembly seats. This was unacceptable to the leadership.

These issues created distance between the TMC leadership and Adhikari, who resigned from the cabinet on Friday.