Expelled TMC rebel Ritabrata Banerjee gets LoP status

way2barak, June 3: Expelled TMC MLA Ritabrata Banerjee has been recognised as the Leader of Opposition by the Speaker in a big blow to party chief Mamata Banerjee. He has been given the keys to the Leader of Opposition room.

“We have fought as a team. We are 58 MLAs now. We are the principal opposition. Two more are with us, but they are out of state. But they may consider us. Two more will be added and the total number is 60,” Ritabrata said.

Defending the move to form a separate bloc within the Assembly, Ritabrata Banerjee said the dissident MLAs remained loyal to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and the Trinamool Congress and had acted to end the uncertainty over the selection of the Leader of the Opposition.

“Our leader is Mamata Banerjee and we are from the TMC. It has become a matter of ridicule in society that the TMC has been unable to elect a Leader of the Opposition. We have come forward to save the party,” Ritabrata told reporters.

He appealed to Mamata Banerjee to endorse the arrangement, saying, “We appeal to our leader Mamata Banerjee to give her consent to it.”

Ritabrata also announced that Raghunathganj MLA Akhruzzaman would serve as the designated Chief Whip of the newly formed dissident TMC bloc in the Assembly.

The ED has summoned TMC general secretary Abhishek Banerjee to appear before the agency for questioning on June 15 in connection with the teachers’ recruitment scam.

Meanwhile, Abhishek, Mamata Banerjee and top brass of TMC are in a huddle at Mamata’s Kalighat residence as the party battles an internal turmoil.

In another big blow for the TMC, Kolkata Mayor Firhad Hakim, an aide of TMC chief Mamata Banerjee, has resigned from his post, amid an internal turmoil roiling the party nearly a month after its defeat in the Bengal Assembly polls.

Senior Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury on Wednesday said TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee was being “paid back in her own coin”, drawing parallels between the current turmoil within her party and the defections that weakened the grand old party in West Bengal after the 2016 Assembly elections.

The former Bengal Congress chief used the opportunity to appeal to “grassroots TMC workers disillusioned by the ongoing crisis”, stating that the Congress remained open to those who had worked for the TMC out of conviction and had faced political persecution on its behalf.