Ritabrata Banerjee Treats the TMC Symbol Freeze as Proof

The Election Commission froze Trinamool’s name and Flowers and Grass symbol on September 17, 2026. West Bengal Leader of the Opposition Ritabrata Banerjee, stepping off a plane after the hearing, said a democracy has no place for dictatorship.

He was not aiming that line at the poll panel. He said the pause proves a party is not a private company and has no heir, with Nandigram and Rejinagar due to vote on October 6 without the mark Trinamool has carried since January 1998.

Neither Faction May Use Flowers and Grass

Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar sat with Election Commissioners Vivek Joshi and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu after separate hearings with both camps. Their 14-page interim freeze order finds two rival groups inside All India Trinamool Congress, one led by former chief minister Mamata Banerjee and the other by senior MLA Arup Roy, the petitioner.

Each side claims to be the party, so the dispute needs a full decision under Paragraph 15 of the Election Symbols Order of 1968. The bench said time before the bypolls is too short for that hearing, and it put both groups on an even keel until the final call.

Neither of the two groups led by Shri Arup Roy (Petitioner) and the other led by Ms. Mamata Banerjee (Respondent) shall be permitted to use the name of the party ‘All India Trinamool Congress’.

Election Commission of India, interim order, September 17, 2026

The same clause bars both groups from the reserved Flowers and Grass symbol. They may pick temporary names that still nod to the parent party, and they will get different marks from the free-symbol list used by independents and unrecognised parties.

WHAT EACH CAMP HAD TO FILE

• Three names: A ranked list of group titles, any one of which the commission may approve.
• Three symbols: A ranked list drawn only from free symbols, not the frozen party mark.
• The clock: Both lists were due by 11:00 AM on September 18, 2026, so returning officers can finish scrutiny after the allotment.

The freeze lasts through the October 6 bypolls and stays in force until the commission decides which group, if either, is the recognised party. Returning officers were told to complete nomination scrutiny only after those temporary names and symbols are allotted.

The Fight Began With a June Working Committee

Trinamool went into this fight already out of office. Assembly tallies compiled on BJP’s 207 seats in 2026 left the party with 80 seats in a 294-seat House, on 41.16 percent of the vote against the BJP’s 46.24 percent. Mamata Banerjee lost Bhabanipur to Suvendu Adhikari by 15,105 votes, 58,812 to 73,917, and Adhikari is now chief minister.

In June a bloc of MLAs broke with her leadership and had Ritabrata, a first-term MLA who had been expelled, recognised as Leader of the Opposition. The Wire’s account of that revolt puts over 60 of those 80 legislators with him. Arup Roy chairs the rebel national working committee.

The legal fight is narrower than the personalities. Ritabrata’s group says the national working committee’s term ended on February 11, 2025, so appointments made on June 5, 2026, had no force, and the committee was rebuilt under Roy on June 22, 2026. Mamata’s group says the committee has a five-year term that runs to 2027. Both sides have filed papers. Lok Sabha MP Kalyan Banerjee told the bench the Mamata group is the original party.

HOW THE DISPUTE REACHED THE BYPOLLS

1. June 5, 2026: The rebel camp challenges working-committee appointments made that day.
2. June 22, 2026: The same camp names Arup Roy as chair of a reconstituted committee.
3. September 9, 2026: The gazette opens the Nandigram and Rejinagar bypolls.
4. September 16, 2026: Nominations close, with both camps filing Forms A and B in the Trinamool name.
5. September 17, 2026: Scrutiny is held, both factions appear before the full bench, and the freeze lands that evening.
6. September 18, 2026: Ranked names and free symbols are due at 11:00 AM.
7. September 19, 2026: Last day to withdraw nominations.
8. October 6, 2026: Polling day, with counting on October 9 and the process due to end by October 11.

Mamata’s camp emailed its choices at 11.36 pm on September 17 and recorded a strong protest. The Arup Roy camp sent its list after the order as well. The commission is to pick one name and one free symbol for each side.

Nandigram Goes to the Polls Without the Symbol

The urgency is not abstract. Nandigram fell vacant after Adhikari won both that seat and Bhabanipur and kept Bhabanipur. Rejinagar fell vacant after Aam Janata Unnayan Party founder Humayun Kabir won Rejinagar and Naoda and kept Naoda. Polling in both seats is on October 6, just before Durga Puja, with counting on October 9.

Nandigram is the seat where Adhikari beat Mamata Banerjee in 2021 and won again in 2026. It is also the place that made Trinamool’s grass-roots story. For the first time since January 1998, when she left Congress and built the party, neither the All India Trinamool Congress name nor Flowers and Grass will sit on a Bengal EVM.

That is a 28-year break in ballot memory. Rural voters have long found the party by the two flowers on grass, not by a candidate’s surname on a form. Both camps still tried to file as Trinamool. Safiuzzaman Saikh (rebel) and Rabiul Alam Chowdhury (Mamata camp) lodged rival Trinamool papers in Rejinagar. Ehteshmul Haque and Sanchita Pradhan Dey did the same in Nandigram. The freeze strands all four on new marks with little time to teach voters what those marks mean.

Adhikari has already treated the two seats as a test of whether minority voters will back his government, and he has said the opposition camps, the Left, and Congress will lose their deposits. He can say that because the anti-BJP vote in both places is now split at least two ways, and the picture that once gathered that vote is dark.

Shiv Sena and LJP Walked This Path First

The Bengal order reads like a form the commission has used before. In October 2022 it froze Shiv Sena’s name and the Bow and Arrow symbol ahead of the Andheri East bypoll, after Eknath Shinde and Uddhav Thackeray each claimed the party. In October 2021 it froze Lok Janshakti Party’s name and the Bungalow symbol after Ram Vilas Paswan’s death split that house.

The Sena order used the same even-keel phrase, barred both groups from the original name “simplicitor,” and sent them to the free-symbol list until a final Paragraph 15 ruling. On February 17, 2023, the commission later gave the original name and Bow and Arrow to Shinde’s group, citing legislative support. The Uddhav group kept the flaming torch it had been allotted in the interim.

That sequence is why the TMC freeze is being folded, in public argument, into a story about opposition brands being stripped. Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party already went through the same mill in Maharashtra. The order in Bengal, though, does not hand Flowers and Grass to the rebels. It takes the mark off both tables.

THREE FREEZES ON THE SAME LEGAL HOOK

Mamata Banerjee knows this machine from the other side. She left Congress in 1998 and had to build a new name and a hand-drawn flowers-and-grass mark of her own. The founder who once walked out of a parent party is now the respondent in an order that treats her party as disputed property.

A Party Is Not a Private Company

Ritabrata’s first public words after the order were the ones that travelled. He said his group learned of the freeze after getting off the plane, then added that a democracy has no place for dictatorship. The next sentences named the target.

This narrative that was going on regarding the symbol and the name, the Election Commission’s interim order today proves that there is no room for dynastic politics. A political party is not a private limited company, nor can there be an heir to a political party. This has been proven today.

Ritabrata Banerjee, Leader of the Opposition, West Bengal Assembly

That is a claim about Abhishek Banerjee’s place in the old command, and about Mamata Banerjee’s right to treat Trinamool as a house with an heir, not a claim that the commission acted outside the Symbols Order. He had already told the bench that both camps had filed Forms A and B, including papers “from Kalighat,” so the panel had to choose.

On X he put the same day in the language of a long fight, not a grievance against the bench.

Politics is a permanent war; a war at every hour; a war at every minute; a war at every second – a war that changes interests, needs and priorities.

Long Live the eternal ideas & values of Democracy enshrined in India’s Constitution.

— Ritabrata Banerjee (@RitabrataBanerj) September 17, 2026

Mamata’s camp did not hail anything. It filed under protest and has spent the summer insisting the working committee still sits on a term that ends in 2027. TMC leader Akhil Giri had said earlier that if the commission did injustice to Mamata Banerjee, the group would go to the Supreme Court. The freeze is interim, so that door is still open once the Paragraph 15 decision comes.

Who Is on the Ballot in the Two Seats?

Mamata Banerjee will not contest Nandigram. Her camp named Sanchita Pradhan Dey there and Rabiul Alam Chowdhury in Rejinagar, after the rebel side had said it would stand down in Nandigram if she ran. The rebel slate is Ehteshmul Haque in Nandigram and Safiuzzaman Saikh in Rejinagar. The BJP has put Hasirani Rath, mother of Adhikari’s aide Chandranath Rath, who was shot on May 6, into Nandigram. Humayun Kabir has put his son, Golam Nabi Azad, into Rejinagar for AJUP.

CANDIDATES FILED BEFORE THE FREEZE

Congress has named Milan Pradhan in Nandigram and Mohd Abdullahil Kafi in Rejinagar. The Left has named CPI’s Shantigopal Giri in Nandigram and CPI(M)’s Said Asad Ali in Rejinagar. None of those tickets inherit Flowers and Grass. The two Trinamool-origin slates must now campaign on whatever free symbols the commission allots, with withdrawal closing on September 19.

Over 60 MLAs Now Sit With the Rebel Camp

THE NUMBERS THE FINAL ORDER WILL MEET

• Assembly stock: Trinamool holds 80 seats after the 2026 verdict; the rebel camp claims over 60 of them.
• Legal hook: Paragraph 15 lets the commission hold that one group, or neither group, is the recognised party.
• Clock: The interim freeze covers October 6 and continues until that full decision is signed.
• Precedent: In the Sena case, the original name and symbol later went to the group with heavier legislative support.

A final order will look at organisation, office-bearers, and that MLA count, not at who founded the two flowers in 1998. Ritabrata already has the LoP title and the larger legislative bloc. Mamata Banerjee still has the founder’s name, the Kalighat office, and a camp that calls the other side fake. The September 17 order decides none of that. It only says both claims are live, and that the ballot cannot carry the old picture while they are.

On October 6, Nandigram and Rejinagar will vote on new names and free symbols. The Flowers and Grass mark stays in the commission’s freezer until the bench says which camp, if either, gets it back.