The veteran Trinamool Congress leader — once described by Banerjee herself as the party's "most colourful personality" — remains one of the few prominent former ministers and sitting MLAs who have publicly reaffirmed loyalty to Banerjee and her nephew, TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, as the party's internal crisis has deepened over the past several weeks.

The rift traces back to the TMC's defeat to the BJP in West Bengal's May 2026 Assembly elections, which cost Banerjee both the chief ministership and, subsequently, control over large parts of her own party. A rebel faction led by expelled MLA Ritabrata Banerjee, the sitting Leader of the Opposition, has since moved aggressively to establish what it calls the "real" Trinamool Congress — taking physical control of the party's Kolkata headquarters, Trinamool Bhavan, on July 3, a day after meeting Election Commission officials in Delhi to stake claim to the party's name and symbol. The rebel camp claims the backing of at least 58 of the party's 80 MLAs.

Mitra pushed back hard against the takeover from the start, arguing the rebel MLAs had no constitutional authority to restructure the party, since Banerjee remains its chairperson under the TMC's own constitution. His position has held even as the list of defectors has grown to include nearly every senior figure from Banerjee's 2011-2026 cabinet — Firhad Hakim, Aroop Biswas, Javed Khan, Jyotipriya Mallick and Arup Roy among them, with former West Bengal TMC president Chandrima Bhattacharya the most recent to cross over, resigning all her party posts on July 5 after Banerjee questioned her loyalty. Two other former ministers, Bratya Basu and Shashi Panja, have stayed publicly silent, neither reaffirming loyalty to Banerjee nor joining the rebels.

Banerjee has responded by consolidating what remains of her camp directly. On July 4, she announced she would personally take over as West Bengal TMC president — a post left vacant after Bhattacharya's exit — and inducted Mitra along with Kunal Ghosh as General Secretaries of the state committee. The rebel faction, for its part, has continued building out a parallel structure, naming former minister Biplab Mitra as its state president, Javed Khan as working president, and expanding to 17 district-level presidents earlier this week, including former Birbhum strongman Anubrata Mondal. Ritabrata has said the faction wants Banerjee to remain associated with the party as a mentor, while separately claiming that MLAs voted to remove her as chairperson altogether — a claim Mitra has rejected as procedurally impossible.

The standoff now sits partly in legal limbo. A petition challenging the Assembly Speaker's recognition of Ritabrata as Leader of the Opposition was denied interim relief, and analysts following the dispute suggest the fight over which faction legally controls the TMC's name, symbol and headquarters will likely need to be settled in court rather than through further organisational announcements from either side.

With July 21 — the date of TMC's traditional Martyrs' Day rally — approaching, both camps are widely expected to use the occasion as their next major show of strength.