The End of the TMC Party?
(Chapter 11)
When Twenty Lok Sabha MPs out of 28, merge TMC into the National Citizens Party of India (NCPI), it is not a defection. It is a dissolution of party in Lok Sabha. If the 60+ MLAs join them, it is a curtain on the 15 years of circus of Trin Mool Congress.
NCPI has overnight become the fifth largest political party in Lok Sabha of the Parliament of India. NCPI will soon have a new President. Its current president Shewly Kundu is an advocate who has resigned citing her preoccupation in legal practice
West had invented shell companies in tax friendly islands. India has invented shell political party in Howrah. Irony is the BJP had brought the requirement of merger of 2/3rd members in Tenth Schedule of Constitution. Now BJP has facilitated a vehicle to defeat it. It makes me wonder as to how many such shell political parties exist in India?
Legal Debate
Rebel TMC MPs have decided to merge with an obscure party from Tripura namely National Citizens Party of India (NCPI). But why not merge with Congress? Why not BJP directly? The question misses the point. The choice of a little-known Tripura party is not about the party. It is about the legal architecture of the anti-defection law. Two-thirds of members of a parliamentary party can decide to merge one party with another party without losing seats. The NCPI merger is a legal vehicle, not a political home. They are not joining a movement. They are executing a compliance procedure. For next 90 days they are bound with NCPI and thereafter they can move ahead, if they like.
Remember it will be the merger of TMC, not of members as media is trying to report. Will TMC exist after merger? I doubt it. This is clause 4 of tenth Schedule of the Constitution: (emphasis in bold added)
4. Disqualification on ground of defection not to apply in case of merger.
- (1) A member of a House shall not be disqualified under subparagraph (1) of paragraph 2 where his original political party merges with another political party and he claims that he and any other members of his original political party-
- (a) have become members of such other political party or, as the case may be, of a new political party formed by such merger; or
- (b) have not accepted the merger and opted to function as a separate group, and from the time of such merger, such other political party or new political party or group, as the case may be, shall be deemed to be the political party to which he belongs for the purposes of sub-paragraph (1) of paragraph 2 and to be his original political party for the purposes of this sub-paragraph.
- (2) For the purposes of sub-paragraph (1) of this paragraph, the merger of the original political party of a member of a House shall be deemed to have taken place if, and only if, not less than two-thirds of the members of the legislature party concerned have agreed to such merger.
Anti-defection
In every case of merger, the matter ends with the decision of speaker. The Election Commission has no role to play. However, if the remaining members of the party contest that they are the real party, matter goes to Election Commission. Look at the recent merger of Aam Aadmi Party’s 10 members of Rajya Sabha. Raghav Chaddha led the coupe. They merged with BJP without making any claim of AAP, the matter ended with the decision of Speaker.
Controversy arose twice in Maharashtra in recent memory. In both cases, the Shiv Sena split and the NCP split, the speaker decided. Later the matter went to Election Commission. It held that office bearers of a family-run organisation are not the party. Elected representatives are the party. Uddhav Thackeray lost the Shiv Sena name and symbol to Eknath Shinde’s camp. Sharad Pawar lost the NCP name and symbol to Ajit Pawar’s camp. Both camps became the party. The Dynastic owners had to form a new party with new symbol.
The same logic now applies to TMC. Mamata Banerjee is the founder/owner. Abhishek Banerjee is the organisation. But twenty MPs and sixty MLAs are the elected representatives. If the Election Commission follows its own settled precedent, TMC as a name, as a symbol, as a legally recognised entity, goes to whoever holds the elected representatives. That is not Mamata.
She will contest it. There will be a dispute. The Commission will take time. But the direction of the precedent is clear. But only if the outgoing MPs and MLAs want the name and symbol and properties. Form what is appearing these legislatures are trying to get as far from TMC as possible. They are avoiding it like a radioactive material.
MPs have joined NCPI and if MLAs claim to be the real TMC and claim be the real party, it will be difficult for Mamata. It appears to be a possibility and in that case it will be three way split. It became clear when the Treasurer has informed the Bank about the dispute and has frozen the bank account.
The larger question is why it happened in Maharashtra and why it is happening in West Bengal?
Three Generals, One Graveyard
Mamata Banerjee. Sharad Pawar. Uddhav Thackeray. Three politicians who at different moments chose to wage war not merely against BJP’s politics but against the Union Government as an institution. The distinction is important that waged war and not just opposed politically.
Opposition contests elections, challenges legislation, builds alternate coalitions. War means using every available instrument: police power, street power, international media, judicial intervention, intelligence leverage, minority consolidation, and constant delegitimisation of the central authority itself.
Pawar built the NCP over twenty-five years. Ajit Pawar took it from him in an afternoon. Thackeray inherited the Shiv Sena his father built over fifty years. Shinde took it from him in a week. Yesterday, Thackeray called a meeting of his remaining MPs. Half did not come. He seems to be losing them again.
Mamata’s trajectory follows the same arc, compressed into five weeks because her enterprise was more transactional than either Pawar’s or Thackeray’s.
None of them had any ideology. Pawaar left Congress on the ground of foreign origin of Sonia Gandi and became her ally at first opportunity of power. Bal Thackeray had announced on TV that the day Shiv Sena whould have to ally with congress, he will wind up the party. His son formed government with Congress and run it for two and half years. The Governmnet of both stalled the Bullet train project. Project cost doubled up from 98,000 crores to 1,98,000 crores. Mamata opposed every scheme. Took money from central government and refused to give account. Opposed Ayushman insurance scheme for all. She opposed every accountability. Both opposed CBI and revoked its power to investigate in corruption matters. Mamata arrested ED officials. She raided ED’s raid, midway, with state police and took away seized material.
All three chose war. All three are now in the same graveyard.
The Secular Politics Obituary
Chapter 7 of this series, published on May 7, 2026, wrote the obituary of secular politics in India. The argument was that the secular model was not killed by BJP or by Hindutva. It was killed by its own practitioners who took the transaction too far and too loud. The evidence has arrived from two states
Mamata Banerjee took minority appeasement to its logical extreme in Bengal and triggered Hindu consolidation. Though it would be more precise to say she triggered anti-TMC consolidation. She supported Naxal/Maoist movement. Yesterday NIA has raided Jadhavpur University officials to investigate the overground workers of violent movement. She ran a criminal model of governance in West Bengal as discussed in Chapter 10 of this series of articles.
Sharad Rao Pawar built his career on Maharashtra’s version of the secular coalition. He was so secular that he invented a fake bomb blast in a mosque area during the 1993 Bombay blasts, falsely telling the nation there were 12 explosions instead of 11, specifically to make Hindus believe Muslims were targeted too. He later admitted this on camera and said he was proud of it. Pawar was the subject of Vohra Committee report. Vohra investigated the allegations of Politician and criminal nexus. The second part of report was never published. Sharad Rao Pawar ended up watching Ajit Pawar collect the name, the symbol, and the elected representatives he could not hold.
Uddhav Thackeray changed his election banners from traditional saffron to green and lost the party to Shinde. He called a meeting of his own MPs yesterday. Half did not come. He must be the only leader to have lost his legislators twice in half a decade. His father gave blessings to the movie Sarkar which speaks of the criminal nexus of Shiv Sena followers. Thackeray did not permit cutting of trees on Aaray forest on the ground of protecting of environment. Now it appears that there were illegal Muslim religious structures in the forest, which have been demolished. Thackeray’s Home minister is under prosecution for trying to extort 100 crore from business establishments in Mumbai, similar to TMC tactics in Bengal.
Three practitioners of the secular model of governance, three different states, three different versions of the same outcome. The model assumed that minority consolidation plus Hindu fragmentation plus media narrative management was a permanent arithmetic. Bengal proved it was not permanent. Maharashtra is proving it was never stable. Tamil Nadu, as Chapter 7 noted, has its own version of the same reckoning approaching.
Therefore, the secular model did not collapse on May 4, 2026. It was already melting across multiple states simultaneously. Bengal was the most dramatic demonstration because it happened at the largest scale with the most visible collapse and it hit media narrative hardest.
The Election Commission
The formal dispute over the TMC name and symbol will take months. Mamata will argue founder’s primacy. Rebels will argue elected representatives’ mandate. The Commission will apply its own precedent from the Shiv Sena and NCP cases.
That precedent has one clear logic. A party exists to contest elections and govern. The people who contest elections and govern are the elected representatives. The founder who cannot hold her elected representatives has already lost the argument before it reaches the Commission.
There is one variable will need a resolution very soon. In the Shiv Sena case, Shinde had a clear majority of MLAs from day one. In the NCP case, Ajit Pawar’s numbers were established quickly. In the TMC case, the MLAs have not yet formally merged anywhere. They have backed Ritabrata Banerjee as Leader of Opposition in the Assembly. If they do not merge, they have only one option. They will have to declare them as real TMC. This is the exact playbook, Shinde and Pawar played in Maharashtra.
The Name Will Go
TMC will end. Not immediately. Not without a legal fight. But the direction is the same direction Shiv Sena and NCP cases took. The name, the symbol, the formal recognition will follow the elected representatives. The elected representatives have already decided where they are going. Only question is: Will the rebel MLAs claim the TMC party?
Judiciary
Do you know, the judiciary has not decided upon the Maharashtra disputes as yet? In all probability the case of Mamata, after Election Commission decides it, will take years in Supreme Court. Long after the politics of the day is over. Supreme Court will settle the law properly but only after the politics of the day is dead. Sometimes politicians too, pass away. But the justice will be served. Eventually.
In the next chapter we shall discuss shell political parties in detail.
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