Election Commission Calls Both Trinamool Factions for Talks on Party Symbol and Name

The Election Commission of India has invited the two rival factions of the Trinamool Congress for separate meetings on September 12 to hear their competing claims over the party's name, its assets and its election symbol.

Letters dated September 9 were sent to Ritabrata Banerjee, the Leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, and to former Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. The two sides have been asked to appear at 11 a.m. and noon respectively at the India International Institute of Democracy and Election Management in Dwarka, Delhi.

The poll body has asked each delegation to be capped at five members, with the names of participants submitted in advance.

The talks are being held with an eye on the October 6 Assembly bypolls in Nandigram and Rejinagar. Nominations for the two seats opened on September 9 and will close on September 16. Both factions have said they intend to contest the bypolls and have staked a claim to the party's 'Joda Ghash Phool' symbol.

Drawing on the precedent set in the Shiv Sena dispute, sources indicated that the Commission is likely to place a temporary freeze on the symbol. In October 2022, ahead of the Andheri East Assembly bypoll, the Commission had ruled in an interim order that neither the Eknath Shinde camp nor the Uddhav Thackeray group could use the Shiv Sena name or its bow-and-arrow symbol. Both were directed to adopt new names — which could retain a link to the parent party — and to choose alternative symbols from the Commission's list of free symbols. That arrangement applied only to the bypoll.

Ritabrata Banerjee leads a group of about 60 of the 80 elected Trinamool MLAs who broke away from Mamata Banerjee after the party's defeat to the BJP in the Assembly polls earlier this year.

His faction had earlier approached the Commission, asserting its claim to the party's name, financial assets and electoral symbol. The group has said it will fight the coming bypolls under the Trinamool name and symbol, and is prepared to contest as independents if the Commission does not recognise its claim before nominations end.

It remains to be seen whether Mamata Banerjee herself enters the fray from Nandigram or Rejinagar.