TMC’s Collapse: Bangladesh Media Questions Mamata’s Political Survival

The Trinamool Congress is facing its most severe internal crisis yet, with mass resignations from Rajya Sabha MPs and widespread rebellion across West Bengal following a crushing defeat to the BJP. Bangladesh’s leading newspaper, The Daily Star, has offered a sharp analysis of how one of India’s most dominant regional parties is unraveling at speed.

The Franchise Model That Fell Apart

The Daily Star described the TMC not as a traditional political party but as a franchise operation, where local strongmen were granted autonomy in exchange for loyalty to Mamata Banerjee. The arrangement depended entirely on two pillars — Mamata’s personal brand and the state machinery’s ability to dispense patronage. Once electoral power vanished, those pillars crumbled. Party offices emptied, organisational networks collapsed, and loyalists swiftly realigned with the new authority in power.

A significant portion of internal discontent has been directed at Abhishek Banerjee, Mamata’s nephew and MP, who stands accused of systematically sidelining senior party veterans while consolidating his own position. Several TMC leaders have openly called for his removal, describing him as the primary catalyst for the rebellion.

A Pattern Bengal Knows Well

The Daily Star pointed to a recurring trend in West Bengal’s political history — once its electorate decides to remove a ruling party, it rarely reverses course. The Congress lost power in 1977 and never recovered. The CPI(M) fell in 2011 and has remained irrelevant since.

The TMC’s survival, the newspaper concluded, would require dismantling everything that defined it — its personality-driven structure, patronage politics, and dynastic ambitions — a transformation that may prove impossible.