The political decline of arrogant 'aapa' - Mamata Banerjee - who took Hindus for granted for years and hurled insults on them and kept wooing Muslims including wrongdoers - came in style.
Mamata camp's Sanchita Pradhan De withdrew her Nandigram bypoll candidature hours after meeting Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari. Sanchita's decision came on the day the Election Commission allotted new symbols and names to the rival camps led by Mamata Banerjee and Ritabrata Banerjee.
Sanchita Pradhan De, the Mamata faction’s candidate, met Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari at the state secretariat, Nabanna, hours before announcing her decision to withdraw her candidature.
The group led by Arup Roy and Ritabrata has been allotted the name “Democratic Trinamool Congress” and the “Envelope” symbol.
Former CM Mamata Banerjee has been allotted the name “Mamata All India Trinamool Congress” and the “Football Player” symbol.
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| Mamata and her mother with Vajpayee |
For decades, the ‘Jora Ghas-Phul’ — twin flowers on grass — has been one of the most recognisable political symbols in West Bengal.
Now, ahead of the October 6 Assembly bypolls, the familiar identity of the Trinamool Congress has been temporarily taken off the electoral battlefield.
It's like grounding the warrior's flag. Moreover, the withdrawal of Mamata's candidate suggests - Nandigram has permanently slipped out of Didi(read aapa's) grip. Her career saw north bound graph in 2006-07 and it all started from Nandigram.
But in real sense Nandigram was bastion of Adhikari family. Suvendu's father Sisir Adhikari was a much respected ear-on-ground leader. It was Suvendu who played the 'Hanuman role' in making Mamata Banerjee - the tigress to take on the Marxists and defeat them in 2011. Mamata betrayed him in no time.
Slowly he was being sidelined - she played a typical patronizing 'aunt' and promoted her nephew Abhishek Banerjee out of turn.
The downfall was expected, but the scale and the speed has surprised even her worst of political detractors and critics.
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| Aunt-Nephew duo ruled the state as their fiefdom |
The development marks an unusual moment in West Bengal politics.
Arrogance made her claim, "Du hazar unish, ‘BJP finish’ --
Now a totally changed political landscape
There was a time when Mamata Banerjee’s political rhetoric was built around the confidence that the BJP could be stopped in West Bengal.
The slogan “2019, BJP finish” became part of the political vocabulary around the Lok Sabha election. She was an eternal prime ministerial-ambitious. Publicly, she said Amit Shah could be tied with a rope by his abdomen.
When Suvendu was Leader of the Opposition. She said he was 'just am MLA'. In 2021, she made her chief secretary Secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay "boycott" Prime Minister Narendra Modi's review meeting of floods and cyclone on May 28, 2021.
The TMC excuse was the chief secretary accompanied Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee into the meeting at the Kalaikunda Airbase to submit a disaster report on Cyclone.
Central Govt had summoned the Babu. But Bandyopadhyay chose to retire on May 31, 2021, rather than report to Delhi, and was subsequently appointed as the Chief Adviser to the Chief Minister. The Centre later proceeded with disciplinary proceedings and served a show-cause notice under the Disaster Management Act.
Somewhere down the line - fate catches up. A product of Congress politics - often promoted by central Congress leaders and Prime Ministers including Rajiv Gandhi, P V Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh -- in 2019, Mamata dropped ‘Congress’ from her party's logo.
The evolution of the Trinamool identity itself offers an interesting historical marker.
Mamata Banerjee broke away from the Congress and formed the Trinamool Congress in 1998, following differences with the party’s approach to the then ruling CPI(M). Twenty-one years later, in March 2019, the party removed the word ‘Congress’ from its public logo.
The new logo carried the word ‘Trinamool’ in green alongside the twin flowers against a blue background. The party continued to remain registered with the Election Commission as the Trinamool Congress.
So much is her false ego that after the mandate came in May 2026 - she declined to resign. Ultimately, it was left to Governor R N Ravi to dissolve the outgoing assembly and technically she was 'dismissed' too.
Pretender of a good poetess and a painter; she also made herself a laughing stock in the court of law.
On May 14th, 2026, Mamata Banerjee had another setback when she went to court to argue her party's case. She was booed with slogans of "chor, chor (thief)" by crowd.
The Bar Council of India also want to know the full details of her career in law.
The Bar Council of India wrote to the West Bengal Bar Council seeking that it "furnish information regarding enrolment and practice status of Mamata Banerjee, former Chief Minister of West Bengal".
"Ms. Mamata Banerjee served as Chief Minister of West Bengal from 2011 to 2026. Having regard to the constitutional public office held by her during the said period, and without expressing any opinion at this stage on the permissibility or otherwise of such appearance, the Bar Council of India requires the factual status of her enrolment, practice, suspension, if any, and resumption, if any, to be verified from your records," the letter read.
All these do reflect the political evolution of the party that ruled for 15 years in office after ousting the communists.
The symbolism of ‘Jora Ghas-Phul’
The twin flowers emerging from grass became closely associated with the grassroots identity of the Trinamool Congress. The symbol has also been linked in political accounts to Mamata Banerjee, who has said that she sketched it herself.
The imagery of two flowers on one stem has an obvious resonance with a famous line from Kazi Nazrul Islam: “মোরা এক বৃন্তে দু’টি কুসুম হিন্দু-মুসলমান…”
The line, broadly translated, evokes two flowers or buds growing from the same stem and has historically been associated with the idea of communal harmony.
That symbolism now acquires a different political context as rival factions seek separate electoral identities.
For West Bengal, the disappearance of the familiar ‘Ghas-Phul’ from the ballot is therefore not simply a change in election symbols. It is also a reminder of how party organisations, electoral symbols and political identities can become contested when a major political organisation splits.
However, on a day when the political needle has swung rapidly, barely an hour after Mamata pledged her support to Congress candidate Milan Pradhan, he was arrested in an old case in connection with three murder cases, one of which dates back to 2007, according to Congress general secretary K C Venugopal.
Mamata has another video recording which she may 'faintly remember'.
Replying to a question by Karan Thapar in 2001 on whether the doors of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) were open for her,
Mamata had replied: “Yes, of course the option is open. In political parties you have to see that… according to our manifesto, our common manifesto, they are our natural ally. We cannot support the CPI-M. They (BJP) are our natural ally.”
In 1998, it was she who had given first crucial political platform to the BJP in West Bengal.
Mamata's stubborn stand leave her in no-man's land .. almost.
Her alleged fickle-mindedness has landed her in an ideological crisis in more ways than one.
ends
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