The 2026 Assembly elections of West Bengal has been one of the most significant elections the State had witnessed in the past several decades not only because it marked the end of the 15-year-old Trinamool Congress regime, and paved the way for the first Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in the State, but also because it reflects a crisis in our polity.

In today’s political system, everyone wants to be on the side of the winner or at least have the blessings of the winning side. Being on the side of the opposition where one has to criticise the government and face a volley of police cases does not appeal to the political class any more.

Therefore, whenever the centre of power shifts, the easiest way out of the mess is to shift one’s allegiance to the winning side, even if it means giving up one’s political loyalty and sabotaging a decade-long political career. This is exactly what is happening with the Trinamool and the so-called rebellion of its MPs and MLAs.

Those who have seen the functioning of the Trinamool Congress from up close would agree that it was run more like a fan club than a political party. Mamata Banerjee was the presiding deity and everyone/everything revolved around her. It was not the political or the organisational acumen that determined the nomination of a Trinamool leader to the Lok Sabha or Rajya Sabha; everything hinged on the liking of the party chairperson, and over the past few years, the general secretary. The back-to-back victories for the party in the State polls only added to the overarching persona of Ms. Banerjee within the Trinamool.

This model worked well for everyone, especially for the party chairperson, who thought that she was in ultimate control of the party, and for her loyalists who knew that they had only one task — to keep her, and later her nephew Abhishek Banerjee, happy and present themselves as committed party workers.

A shattered illusion

There were a few exceptions such as Suvendu Adhikari and Tapas Roy who left the party disillusioned and charted a different political course. Retired bureaucrat Jawhar Sircar is perhaps the only exception in recent times who gathered the courage to call out the bluff of the Trinamool after the rape and murder of a doctor at Kolkata R.G. Kar Hospital in August 2024. But a majority of the Trinamool Congress leadership continued singing odes to the party leader, turning a blind eye to corruption, authoritarianism and misrule; all because they wanted to be on the side of the winning team.

Those who have turned rebels now are not the victims of the Trinamool’s fan club model but those who have been its biggest beneficiaries. These rebel MPS and MLAs cannot claim ignorance of what was happening under Trinamool rule from 2011-26, and now suddenly realise how the party has failed the people of West Bengal.

The 28-year-old experiment of Trinamool Congress is failing not because it suffered an electoral setback, but because the foundations of the party have crumbled. Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek Banerjee were living in a bubble and liked being surrounded by sycophants, whose only ideology was opportunism, to the extent that just one electoral setback has pushed them to a crisis threatening the very existence of the party.

Though the rebellion of about 60 of 80 MLAs and 20 of 28 MPs is something that the people of West Bengal have not witnessed in the past, between 2011 and 2024 there were innumerable instances where representatives of civic bodies, MLAs and even MPs from the Opposition joined the ruling Trinamool Congress. In the 15 years of the party’s regime, almost 50 MLAs from the Left Front, the Congress and the BJP joined the Trinamool, and in not a single case did the Speaker of the Assembly disqualify any legislator under the anti-defection law. Mamata Banerjee has thus become a victim of her own machinations.

Additionally, anger is spilling out on the streets against local Trinamool leaders accused of corruption, extortion and electoral violence, with over a hundred local Trinamool leaders being arrested.

The BJP leadership is aware of the danger of mixing the Trinamool rebels with their own flock. All that the BJP is promising the rebels currently is an assurance that everything will be smooth sailing for the next few years.