As Trinamool Congress splinters in the aftermath of its 2026 defeat in West Bengal, former chief minister and party supremo Mamata Banerjee faces a possibility that would have seemed unlikely even six months ago: returning to the Congress—the very party she’d left to build her political empire.
It began in 1984, in Jadavpur, where a young woman from an obscure middle-class family ran on a Youth Congress ticket against Somnath Chatterjee, one of CPI(M)’s formidable figures. She won that contest, in one of the first signals that Banerjee was not a typical politician.
But the Congress tested her patience. By the late 1990s, she had concluded that the party would never seriously confront the Left, and in 1998, she walked out and founded the Trinamool Congress — built on her personality, her grievances and her street-level instincts.
What followed was one of Indian politics’ more remarkable odysseys. She aligned with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee years, serving as a minister twice at the Centre until 2001. By 2026, Banerjee distanced herself from the BJP, calculating — correctly — that the Muslim vote was indispensable to defeating the Left in Bengal.
She took her agitations to Keshpur and Garbeta in West Midnapore, to Singur in 2006, and Nandigram in 2007, leading the charge against the state government’s land acquisition drive and suffering injuries in the process. Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, the chief minister trying to rebuild West Bengal’s image with industries, could not hold the wave she had generated.
In 2011, in its 34th year, the Left front fell.
Banerjee became chief minister — the first woman to hold the state’s top post. She had beaten the Left by appropriating its own rhetoric: speaking for the poor, the marginalised, the streets. Within a year, she broke the Congress alliance that had helped bring her to power.
Over the next decade, corruption cases — Saradha, Narada — circulated but did not move voters. She won again in 2016.
When the BJP took 19 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal in 2019, she recalibrated: stepped up welfare schemes, toned down what her critics called minority appeasement and played up her own Hindu identity. In 2021, her party swept back to power with 213 seats in the state. She had now defeated three of India's major political streams: the Left, the Congress and the BJP.
The 2026 assembly elections ended that streak.
The BJP’s victory in West Bengal last month, after 15 years of TMC governance, triggered a party crisis that has moved faster than most political observers anticipated. Fifty-nine of the party's 78 assembly legislators rebelled and backed Ritabrata Banerjee as Leader of the Opposition in the state assembly — an open challenge to the party’s functioning and, specifically, to the role of TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, widely seen as Mamata’s heir apparent.
At least 15 TMC Lok Sabha lawmakers have since broken away, with MP Kakoli Ghosh — a four-term parliamentarian — claiming the backing of 19 MPs and announcing support for the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. The number 19 is precisely the threshold required to escape anti-defection proceedings against the MPs.
The party’s Rajya Sabha losses have been rapid too. Three TMC lawmakers have resigned within a week: Sukhendu Sekhar Ray, who cited "unbridled corruption" and "anarchical rule"; Sushmita Dev; and the latest, Prakash Chik Baraik, on Thursday.
Into this crisis, the possibility of a Congress merger has floated — fed in part by Banerjee’s meeting with Congress parliamentary party chairperson Sonia Gandhi in Delhi on Tuesday, and by Abhishek Banerjee’s meeting with Rahul Gandhi soon after.
Both the parties have publicly distanced themselves from the speculation, yet, the conversations are happening, and their significance is not lost on observers.
“The Congress should go with the Left in West Bengal for its revival. The Gandhis should not forget how Mamata won the 2011 elections with the help of the Congress and for the next 15 years, she tried her best to demolish the Congress in West Bengal,” Kolkata-based political commentator Suman Chattopadhyay told HT.
A merger or a looser alliance, if either were to happen, would complete the arc.
The party Mamata Banerjee had built to escape the Congress, outlast the Left, outmanoeuvre the BJP and dominate West Bengal for 15 years may, in the end, find its survival in the house she left 28 years ago.
