Traitors, join BJP and fight me: Mamata Banerjee's blistering attack on rebels

Mamata Banerjee on Saturday launched a sharp attack on the rebel faction that has split the Trinamool Congress, accusing the dissidents of working with the BJP to engineer a break in the party and daring them to join the BJP openly if they had the courage. In a Facebook Live address, her first since the TMC entered its biggest crisis, Banerjee defended her leadership, attacked the rebels, vowed to go ahead with the party’s July 21 Martyrs’ Day rally despite what she called administrative hurdles, and said that while individuals may leave, ‘an institution does not cease to exist’.

Her remarks came on a day she lost another long-time associate, Chandrima Bhattacharya, who resigned as the TMC’s West Bengal president and from other party posts. Responding to



Banerjee’s allegations, the BJP said TMC leaders were leaving because the ‘cut-money culture’, which it claimed had held the party together, had ended after the saffron party came to power.

"I dare the treacherous and ungrateful traitors who are abandoning the party to directly join the BJP and take me on if they have the courage to do so, instead of playing this dishonest BJP-sponsored game," Banerjee said.

Attacking the dissenters, she added, "You call yourself rebels? Where was your rebellion before the elections? Where was your dissent during the last 15 years when you were MPs and MLAs on TMC tickets and operated as ministers and in other important government positions? Why didn’t you come to me then and voice your differences."