KOLKATA: Former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday said in a video message that she is not worried about starting from scratch again to regain her political relevance in West Bengal and the country.
Her statement comes at a time when the Trinamool Congress, founded by her, has been virtually divided into three factions, with the faction led by her and her nephew, Abhishek Banerjee, now the "original but minority" faction in the party.
On the other hand, the rebel faction led by expelled party legislator Ritabrata Banerjee is not just the majority faction in the Trinamool Congress legislative party in the West Bengal assembly, but also a majority faction in the party's new national working committee, replacing Mamata Banerjee with veteran party legislator Arup Roy as the national chairperson.
At the same time, two out of 28 Lok Sabha members of the Trinamool Congress have recently left the party under the leadership of four-time Lok Sabha member Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar and Satabdi Roy and joined the virtually non-existent Tripura-based Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI).
In such a situation, Mamata Banerjee gave a Facebook Live message on Wednesday, in which she said she would start everything from scratch, as she did in 1998 by establishing the Trinamool Congress after breaking away from the Congress.
She said the people who voted for the Trinamool Congress in the recently concluded West Bengal assembly election voted after seeing the traditional party symbol, which was her brainchild.
She apologised to those people on behalf of these traitors within the party.
She added that she was alone in 1997 when she decided to establish the Trinamool Congress and fight. She said there are now 28 MPs and more MLAs, and if she could start completely from scratch, she could surely do the same in 2026.
She also rubbished the deserters' allegations that their decision to move away from the side of Mamata Banerjee was prompted by her excessive pampering of her nephew, Abhishek Banerjee, who is also the party's general secretary.
Banerjee said they are using Abhishek as an excuse, adding that he is still fighting against all odds and will continue to fight for the next 50 years.
She said the deserters are leaving either out of greed or out of fear.
