Tension in TMC rises further with Kalyan Banerjee, an MP, blasting his party colleague Mahua Moitra when he called her “below the standard” and clearly said, “She is not worthy of my time”. Banerjee went on to express regret for losing his temper and damaging the reputation of his party before West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
He further stated that discussion about Moitra was a “collossal waste of time and energy” underlining the growing rift of infighting within the party.
“That lady is not my subject matter at all, and she is very below the standard. There is no point talking about her. I got angry for her and said a few things to Didi (Mamata Banerjee) too. Now I feel bad about it,” the report quoted Banerjee as saying.
Change in Perception for Banerjee
Banerjee thought his perception of the situation changed after he got a text from a lawyer, irrespective of whether he was clear about the context or the person from whom he received it. This made him re-evaluate his previous reactions, dubbing the fracas a misallocation of his energy.
“She doesn’t deserve my attention,” he noted, with an eye towards closure of the altercation.
Resignation Amidst Internal Friction
The facts turned upside down with Banerjee quitting as TMC chief whip in the Lok Sabha. Barely hours after Mahua Moitra’s caustic comments in a podcast, denigrating Banerjee with the term “the banana”, Banerjee accepted the charge of the party’s disarray, brought up during Mamata Banerjee’s video-conference meeting with the TMC MPs, for which reason he chose to resign from being the chief whip.
Dr. Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar’s appointment as the new chief whip, immediately following Banerjee’s exit, is a TMC initiative to stabilize its leadership in Parliament during the turbulence.
Broader Implications for Party Unity
Banerjee further frowned upon internal party abuses, condemning Moitra’s remarks and citing the double standards applied to gender-based insult reactions. He pointed out that insidious language should never become a norm, regardless of the gender of its target.
The cutthroat public spat lays bare divisions in the TMC that threaten its already brittle internal unity before the next political contest. The ball remains in Mamata Banerjee’s court to mend the cracks within the party, as both leaders wallow in this conflict.
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