TMC MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar Resigns from Organisational Posts Amid Internal Dissent

PTI, May 27, 2026, Kolkata: The fault lines within the TMC after its Assembly election drubbing widened further on Wednesday as senior MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar quit all organisational posts and launched a political broadside, invoking corruption allegations, the RG Kar row and the growing grip of I-PAC over the party machinery.

The resignation of the four-term Barasat MP — once among the party’s most recognisable faces and national president of its women’s wing — came barely a day after she attended Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari’s administrative review meeting in Kalyani, defying what party sources said was an instruction from the TMC leadership to stay away.

The rapid-fire sequence of events over the last 72 hours has amplified whispers of drift and factional unease within the ruling party, where electoral setbacks are increasingly finding expression through public displays of discontent.

In a letter addressed to TMC state president Subrata Bakshi, Dastidar sought to be relieved of all organisational responsibilities, including her role as chairperson of the All India Trinamool Mahila Congress.

However, Dastidar has not resigned as the Lok Sabha MP from Barasat and continues in Parliament, indicating that her move, at least for now, stops short of a complete political rupture with the party.

But the letter carried the weight of something larger, less a resignation note and more a pointed indictment of the party’s internal climate.

“My conscience is deeply disturbed,” she wrote, referring to allegations surrounding the ration scam, recruitment irregularities and “financial and administrative improprieties” which, according to her, had generated “anger and distrust” among ordinary people.

An alumnus of RG Kar Medical College, Dastidar also referred to the rape and murder of a doctor at the institution and allegations of an attempted cover-up, saying the episode had “personally shaken” her.

In perhaps her most politically loaded remark, she took a swipe at a fellow TMC MP without naming him, in an apparent reference to Kalyan Banerjee.

“There is little meaning in remaining in a position where one cannot stop the indecent conduct of an uncultured and rude party MP towards a woman MP, and where support and empathy are absent from the higher leadership,” Dastidar, a close confidante of Mamata Banerjee since the eighties, wrote.

The remark assumes significance as Dastidar was recently removed as chief whip of the TMC’s parliamentary party, with the responsibility returning to Kalyan Banerjee — a move that had visibly upset her.

Soon after her removal, she had posted on social media: “Known since 1976, journey started in 1984. Four decades of loyalty rewarded today.”

Party insiders said the cryptic message was interpreted as a rare public expression of hurt by a leader otherwise seen as among Mamata Banerjee’s steadfast loyalists.

Dastidar also criticised I-PAC, the election consultancy closely associated with the TMC’s campaign machinery.

“If any opaque and undemocratic influence gradually begins to dominate the organisation, it cannot be good for the party’s ideals and traditions,” she wrote.

The remarks are likely to reopen a long-running debate within sections of the party over the growing influence of external strategists and backroom political management on organisational functioning.

Significantly, Dastidar clarified that she was not quitting the party and would continue as an ordinary worker.

But in Bengal politics, where symbolism often acquires a life of its own, remaining inside the party while walking away from every organisational responsibility can itself become a political message.

The resignation came just days after Dastidar stepped down as president of the TMC’s Barasat organisational district unit, a move accepted by the leadership, which appointed Tapas Chatterjee as her replacement.

The unease around her political future had intensified further on Tuesday when she attended Adhikari’s administrative review meeting in Kalyani alongside six TMC MLAs.