Trinamool Rebel, 10 MPs Meet BJP Leaders As Mamata Banerjee Attends INDIA Meet

At least 10 Trinamool rebel MPs are holding a closed-door meeting with BJP leaders in Delhi as turbulence intensifies within the Mamata Banerjee-led party. The meeting venue is said to be BJP leader Bhupender Yadav's house, barely a kilometre from where Banerjee is holding talks with her INDIA bloc allies to chart their next plan of action to take on the BJP.

The rebels' meeting is being attended by Shatabdi Roy, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, Abu Taher Khan, Khalilur Rahaman, Asit Kumar Mal, Arup Chakraborty, Kalipada Soren, Jagadish Chandra Barma Basunia, Prasun Banerjee, and Sharmila Sarkar.

Sukhendu Sekhar Ray, who quit the party hours earlier, and MLA Akhruzzaman are also present.

Read: Bengal MLA Ritabrata Banerjee To NDTV On What's Next, "Backstabber" Label

These MPs are among 20-odd parliamentarians who are apparently unhappy with the current situation and are likely to form their own grouping in the parliament.

"We are forming a separate bloc of 20 MPs and going to give support to the NDA. Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar is our chief whip and Shatabdi Roy is our Deputy Leader," Sharmila Sarkar told NDTV.

It has been learnt that the rebel leaders are going to inform the Speaker tomorrow under the leadership of Ghosh Dastidar, claiming they are the 'real Trinamool'.

The latest developments shift the focus over Trinamool's internal rumblings to Delhi after their resounding defeat in the West Bengal assembly elections. From phones being switched off to an MP taking a connecting flight for a sudden Delhi visit, sources say that a lot had been brewing within the party that has been struggling to keep its flock together.

A Connecting Flight

Sources told NDTV that a senior Trinamool MP, who had to travel from Mumbai to Kolkata last evening, had an unplanned layover in Delhi. During those few hours in the capital, the MP met people discreetly without raising an alarm, they said, and identified this lawmaker as one from the surrounding districts of Kolkata.

The meeting in Delhi was aimed at discussing the party's plan of action over reports that 20 Trinamool MPs had been gathering support to write against the party leadership, they added.

Besides the 20 MPs, at least 60 out of its 80-odd MLAs had reportedly been backing a rebel faction led by MLA Ritabrata Banerjee after the election debacle last month and had skipped multiple party activities in a visible show of defiance.

Read: Fear, Anxiety And 'Missing' Leadership: Inside The Trinamool Mutiny

The resistance reflected not just in physical attendance but also in how they addressed their party leader. Revered as 'Didi' or elder sister by her partymen over the decades, Banerjee now finds herself being addressed by her first name - a demotion in perspective in the Indian context.

Sources said this came from an MP who has a sports background, though they stopped short of naming him.

Another MP representing a seat in North 24 Paraganas, who had been denied an assembly ticket, has switched off his phone for over 24 hours, in what sources say was another way of expressing dissent without speaking a word.

This wasn't Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, sources were specific, referring to the Barasat MP who had raised eyebrows by attending Suvendu Adhikari's cabinet meeting and taking potshots at a colleague.

Another actor-turned-MP reached Delhi yesterday, who, sources said, has been silently drifting away from the party. The list gets longer with two more lawmakers from North Bengal.