Furious over being dropped from a signature forgery case via a late-night text message, veteran Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader and senior lawyer Kalyan Banerjee on Thursday launched a blistering public attack on party chief Mamata Banerjee’s nephew and national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, asked Mamata to choose between him and her nephew and even threatened to chart his own political course if the party continues to tolerate the younger leader’s allegedly disrespectful style of functioning.
The four-term Serampore MP also declared that he would no longer represent Abhishek Banerjee in court.
“Henceforth, I won’t be appearing in any legal matter of Abhishek Banerjee. I don’t like his arrogance. I am a senior advocate and senior to him in politics. He should understand that the party is facing this distress because of him. He can’t go on disrespecting people,” Kalyan Banerjee told HT.
“He has destroyed the party,” the senior lawyer said.
Kalyan Banerjee’s outburst comes at a time when the TMC is reeling from an internal rebellion following its debacle in the recent state assembly elections, with rebel factions emerging in both Parliament and the state assembly.
On Thursday morning, Rajya Sabha MP Prakash Chik Baraik resigned from the Rajya Sabha and the party, the third TMC parliamentarian to quit this week.
In a statement to reporters earlier in the day, Kalyan slammed Abhishek Banerjee for his alleged arrogance and disrespectful attitude. “The party has been destroyed because of him. I was with the party and Mamata Banerjee during bad times. Even today, I am with her. But Mamata Banerjee has to choose between me or him. This is an ultimatum. I leave it to her wisdom. If she says the party cannot run without Abhishek, I will have to look for other ways,” Kalyan Banerjee told reporters in Kolkata.
The immediate trigger for the veteran leader’s tongue lashing was a late-night text message informing him that he had been replaced in a high-profile signature forgery case in the High Court of Calcutta.
“At night I prepared for the case, which was scheduled to be heard today. Around 12:30 at night, my son was informed through a text message that I was not required and that advocate Ayan Bhattarcharya would fight the case. This is so humiliating. I have been practising for 45 years now. Bhattacharya is much junior. He (Abhishek) doesn’t even know how to respect a senior lawyer,” he said.
Kalyan is one of Mamata’s oldest and most loyal political associates and has stayed put to rebuild the party when a wave of leaders abandoned the TMC after its recent defeat in the state elections.
“Why should I fight the case of a person who doesn’t know how to respect a senior lawyer? Don’t treat me like a dustbin. I am not an employee of Camac Street (Abhishek Banerjee’s office is on Camac Street). Why so arrogant? He disrespects everyone. I can’t work with him. I am an honest politician. But even then, people are shouting ‘chor chor’ when they see me. I had spoken out against him in 2022. I was alone then,” he added.
TMC spokesperson Kunal Ghosh declined to comment.
“I love and respect Abhishek. He is my leader. But Kalyan Banerjee is a veteran leader and a senior politician and I am not going to make any comments. I have faced similar treatment in the party. I was given an assignment. I successfully completed it. But then suddenly I was replaced by another person. It would have been better had he told it within the party,” he said.
