NEW DELHI: Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday urged opposition parties in West Bengal to bury their differences and unite against the Bharatiya Janata Party.Addressing the annual July 21 Martyrs’ Day rally organised near Birla Planetarium, Mamata also termed the leaders who defected from the TMC as “traitors”, saying they would never be allowed to return to the party.”I want everyone to unite under the banner of the INDIA alliance in Bengal to fight the BJP. I don’t have any ego. I urge others also to keep aside their differences and fight together,” Mamata said.Though she did not name the Congress or the CPI(M), her remarks were seen as an appeal to the TMC’s INDIA bloc partners, with whom it has maintained an uneasy relationship in West Bengal despite being part of the national opposition alliance.During the address, Mamata also said that she has “many people” to fill the places of leaders who jumped ship after the TMC suffered a huge setback in the Assembly elections.”I challenge the traitors to directly join the BJP and fight elections,” she said, accusing them of functioning as proxies of the saffron party.”If you want to support the BJP, go to the BJP. The more of you who leave, the happier I will be. My students and youth workers are there to fill every vacancy,” Mamata said. “Those thieves have gone to the BJP. I will never take them back,” she added.While Banerjee’s faction held the Martyrs’ Day programme near Birla Planetarium, the breakaway faction led by Ritabrata Banerjee organised a parallel rally on Mayo Road in central Kolkata.The TMC chief said the rebels, with the help of the BJP, were trying to take away the party’s “twin flower” symbol but could not do so as she is the founder-chairperson.Mamata also announced that she would soon begin touring districts across West Bengal.”After this, I will travel across the districts. I want to see who has the power to stop me,” she said in an apparent swipe at the rebel camp.The former West Bengal chief minister accused the BJP of trying to prevent her TMC camp from holding the Martyrs’ Day programme, alleging that party workers had to guard the stage throughout the previous night after it was targeted.The TMC is facing its biggest organisational crisis since its formation in 1998. Several senior leaders and MLAs have joined a rival faction led by Ritabrata Banerjee, with many attributing their exit to Abhishek Banerjee’s growing influence within the party.The rebellion has also reached Parliament, where several Lok Sabha MPs have broken away from the Mamata Banerjee-led camp. With rival factions now operating parallel organisational structures, the leadership tussle has emerged as the defining challenge facing the party.
