EC freezes TMC name, symbol; Mamata and Ritabrata factions told to pick alternatives
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "EC freezes TMC name, symbol; Mamata and Ritabrata factions told to pick alternatives")
West Bengal Leader of Opposition and rebel Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Ritabrata Banerjee speaks to the media after a meeting with Election Commission officials regarding party representations, in New Delhi on Thursday Photograph: (ANI)
The Election Commission has barred both TMC factions from using the party name and Flowers & Grass symbol in upcoming bypolls pending a final decision.
The Election Commission of India has thrown the battle for the Trinamool Congress's identity into a freeze, ahead of the crucial bypolls, as neither warring faction can use the party's name or its iconic twin-flower symbol until the dispute is settled for good.
The showdown reached Delhi on Thursday, when West Bengal Leader of Opposition Ritabrata Banerjee led his five-member delegation before the Election Commission's full bench, squaring off against a rival team representing Mamata Banerjee.
Both camps insist they are the "real" Trinamool Congress, and both want it on record ahead of by-elections in Nandigram and Rejinagar. Nominations closed a day earlier, scrutiny wrapped up Thursday, and both sides had filed the mandatory Forms A and B, effectively daring the Commission to pick a winner on the spot.
It declined to. In its interim order, the Commission noted it found "two rival groups within the All India Trinamool Congress — one led by Ms. Mamata Banerjee and the other by Ritabrata Banerjee — each claiming to be the de facto party," concluding that the standoff demands a full hearing under paragraph 15 of the Symbols Order, 1968. Until that final ruling, the order states plainly that neither the Roy-led petitioners nor the Banerjee-led respondents "shall be permitted to use the name 'All India Trinamool Congress'" or its symbol in the bypolls.
Instead, the Commission has told both sides to come back with alternatives — fast. By 11:00 AM on September 18, 2026, each faction must submit three alternative names, in order of preference, along with three free symbols they'd accept as substitutes, leaving the final pick to the Commission.
Speaking to reporters after the hearing earlier in the day, Ritabrata Banerjee said, "We met the Election Commission's full bench today... The process now lies with the Election Commission and the Returning Officer... The Election Commission is the apex body; we must have faith in it." He confirmed his side had filed Form A as the Trinamool Congress, but acknowledged the Kalighat camp had done the same — leaving the Commission as the only tiebreaker.
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Kalyan Banerjee, representing the Mamata camp, was far more combative. He questioned the legitimacy of his rivals' claim outright, asking how they could contest on the party symbol at all if the chairperson's term had "allegedly ended in 2025." Mamata Banerjee founded the party, he argued, and any valid leadership change must follow a bottom-up organisational election across a multi-state party — not, he suggested, a hastily convened June 22 session that bypassed MPs entirely. He also maintained that court proceedings shouldn't tie the Commission's hands.
The Kalighat side went further, proposing a show of strength at Brigade Parade Ground to let the Commission gauge real organisational muscle, while urging it to stay its hand given parallel litigation already in the courts.
Trinamool Congress was born on January 1, 1998, when Mamata Banerjee broke away from the Congress, coining "Trinamool" — Bengali for "grassroots" — to mark a clean break and claim closeness to ordinary people. The party's election symbol, Jora Ghas Phul (twin flowers with grass), was registered at the same time, evoking roots and growth. For two decades the logo still carried the Congress legacy, until March 2019, when the party dropped "Congress" from its branding altogether on its 21st anniversary, keeping just "Trinamool" beside the twin-flower emblem — though it stayed officially registered with the EC as Trinamool Congress. That nearly 30-year-old name and symbol are now the prize both rival factions were fighting to claim.
The parallels to the Shiv Sena split are hard to miss — there too, the EC froze the original symbol and handed both factions temporary names and symbols pending a final verdict.
