The decision has triggered a sharp political reaction from the Congress, which described the Election Commission's move as akin to “firing a bullet at the heart of Indian democracy.”
The Congress wrote on Facebook, “Vote theft. Government theft. Now party theft. These have become symbols of our democratic decline. The constitutional responsibility of the Election Commission of India is to protect the mandate. But instead, it is helping those forces that overturn the people's verdict itself.”
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi wrote, “This fight is not just Mamata Banerjee ji's. It is the fight of every political party and every voter who wants free and fair elections.”
Congress general secretary KC Venugopal said in a post on X, “The Election Commission has once again proved that it is nothing more than a puppet in the hands of the BJP.”
Commenting on the Election Commission's decision, Sayantan Ghosh, author of “Battleground Bengal” and a journalism teacher at Kolkata's Xavier College, wrote that, in his view, the freezing of the TMC's name and election symbol by the Election Commission was “not entirely unexpected.”
“In such organisational disputes, the Commission has taken a similar position in the past. The bigger issue is that at this stage, the Commission has refused to recognise the Trinamool Congress led by Mamata Banerjee as the TMC, even though Mamata Banerjee is the party's founder-president,” Ghosh wrote.
“This is a major setback for Mamata's TMC. They may have anticipated this, but losing the identity and election symbol of a party that she herself founded is an extraordinary political development for Bengal. The fact that the person who founded the party is now having to fight for recognition is unprecedented in Bengal's electoral history,” he said.
The Election Commission's order came on Thursday after a hearing involving the two rival factions. It was the second hearing before the Commission in less than five days. The two sides had earlier been summoned for a hearing on September 12, when the Ritbrat faction was also asked to submit some additional documents.
By-elections in the two Assembly constituencies are scheduled to be held on October 6. Both factions had fielded candidates for the by-elections using the Trinamool Congress election symbol, following which the Election Commission began its decisive hearing in the dispute.
According to news agency PTI, the Election Commission said in its 14-page order that, after considering all the information available to it as a whole, it was of the view that there were two rival factions within the Trinamool Congress. One is led by Mamata Banerjee and the other by Arup Roy, representing the Ritbrat faction. Both factions are now claiming to be the party.
The Commission said the matter therefore required an appropriate decision under Paragraph 15 of the Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968.
The Election Commission said the order had been issued to place both rival factions on an equal footing and protect their respective rights and interests.
The order stated that neither of the two factions led by Arup Roy, the petitioner, and Mamata Banerjee would be allowed to use the TMC name and election symbol. The two factions would instead be identified by the names they choose for their respective groups. If they wished, they could also mention their association with their original party, the TMC, in their names.
The Election Commission said both factions would also be allotted separate election symbols of their choice from the list of symbols notified by the Commission for the ongoing by-elections.
After the hearing before the Election Commission, Mamata Banerjee faction MP Kalyan Banerjee told reporters that they had argued against any interim order being passed. “We said that no interim order should be passed. The hearing lasted about one and a half hours. Mamata Banerjee is the real founder and creator of the party. No new person can come and claim to be the founder of the party,” he said.
Kalyan Banerjee said the party's constitution and electoral process begin at the booth and block levels and that fabricated documents could not be used by setting those processes aside.
He alleged that Ritbrat Banerjee's motive was that he had not been chosen as Leader of the Opposition and had therefore engineered the entire episode. “He is the person who joined the party in 2023. He was not an original member of the party. He is trying to take control of the party,” Kalyan Banerjee said.
He also said that the Election Commission could not directly implement interim orders of civil courts unilaterally. According to him, the Commission would have to independently decide which side should retain the original party and its election symbol.
Ritbrat Banerjee represented the Arup Roy faction during its meeting with the Election Commission. Speaking to reporters afterwards, Ritbrat said, “We are representing the Trinamool Congress and we have submitted Form A.”
“Now the process is with the Election Commission and the Returning Officer. It is possible that the Returning Officer will take a decision after consulting the Commission. The Election Commission is the supreme authority and we must have faith in it. We work in a parliamentary democracy, so we have to trust the Election Commission,” he said.
The split in the TMC emerged in May following the BJP's victory in the West Bengal Assembly elections. On June 3, around 60 of the Trinamool Congress's 80 MLAs rebelled against the party leadership. Ritbrat was chosen as the Leader of the Opposition and received recognition from the Assembly Speaker. The rebel faction later declared Arup Roy as the party president.
Twenty of Mamata Banerjee's 28 Lok Sabha MPs also broke away from the party and merged with an obscure Nationalist Citizen Party of India.
In its interim order issued on Thursday, the Election Commission said Mamata Banerjee had informed it on June 23 that a meeting of the party's national working committee had been held on June 20 and that the names of office-bearers and members of the national working committee had been announced.
Ritbrat told the Commission on June 23 that the tenure of the national working committee had ended on February 11, 2025, and that it no longer had the authority to take decisions after that date. He said a special convention of the party was called on June 22, at which Arup Roy was unanimously elected party president.
Mamata Banerjee has said that the party constitution was submitted to the Election Commission on March 9 this year and that it specifies a five-year term for party office-bearers. She said the previous election had been held in 2022, making the tenure of the office-bearers valid until 2027.
The Election Commission's decision to freeze the party's name and election symbol follows the precedent adopted in the recent splits within the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party, or NCP.
In both cases, the Election Commission froze the parties' names and election symbols until the disputes were resolved and later allotted them to the rebel factions.
Reacting to the latest development, the Congress also wrote on Facebook, “First Shiv Sena, then NCP and now Trinamool Congress. The same pattern every time. The BJP and the Election Commission together break a party. Then its election symbol is taken away. When an entire party can be stolen, it is hardly surprising that the votes of crores of Indians can also be stolen.”
The Election Commission's order has therefore placed both rival factions outside the TMC's established name and symbol for the October 6 by-elections, requiring each side to proceed under a separate name and election symbol while the organisational dispute remains unresolved.
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