New Delhi, 10 June (H.S.):

Senior Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader and Rajya Sabha member Sushmita Dev resigned from the Upper House on Wednesday. Shortly after submitting her resignation, she met Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, and photographs of the meeting subsequently surfaced.

In her resignation letter addressed to Rajya Sabha Chairman C. P. Radhakrishnan, Dev stated that she was resigning from her membership of the Rajya Sabha with immediate effect. She expressed gratitude for the cooperation and support she received from the Chairman, the Deputy Chairman, and officials of the Rajya Sabha Secretariat during her tenure.

Dev’s resignation comes at a time when the Trinamool Congress is already grappling with internal dissent and a series of departures by party leaders.

The first signs of unrest emerged in May when the party leadership decided to appoint Shobhandeb Chattopadhyay as Leader of the Opposition in the state assembly. However, 58 of the party’s 80 legislators reportedly defied the leadership’s decision and elected rebel legislator Ritabrata Banerjee for the post.

Subsequently, nearly 20 of the party’s 28 Lok Sabha members reportedly wrote to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla expressing their desire to support the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and form a separate parliamentary group. The development was publicly acknowledged by senior TMC MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar.

Sushmita Dev’s resignation is the latest in a series of exits and internal splits within the party. Most recently, on June 8, senior leader and Rajya Sabha MP Sukhendu Sekhar Roy resigned, accusing the party leadership of corruption and mismanagement while praising the BJP-led government.

Earlier, the party had also suffered setbacks at the local-government level when 127 councillors and party functionaries resigned collectively. The resignations included dozens of councillors from the municipalities of Kanchrapara and Halisahar, further highlighting the growing challenges confronting the Trinamool Congress.

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Hindusthan Samachar / Jun Sarkar