Sushmita Dev Resigns from TMC: The Clean Break That Leaves All Options Open
- Jun 10
- 3 min read
Sushmita Dev's resignation from Trinamool Congress on Wednesday marks the latest chapter in a deepening political crisis for the party following the BJP's landslide victory in the 2026 West Bengal Assembly Elections. A photograph of Dev with Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma fuelled immediate speculation about a potential BJP joining.
By Pranjal Gupta
New Delhi, June 10: Sushmita Dev, who served as Trinamool Congress's national spokesperson for nearly five years, parted ways with the party on Wednesday. Confirming her resignation to the press, she offered little by way of explanation — only that "it is a long story why I left the TMC."
What followed was swift and telling. A photograph of Dev smiling alongside Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma began circulating on social media, prompting a media person to ask whether there was an Assam connection. "There was only an Assam connection," replied Sushmita who Silchar in Assam. Her resignation comes after Sukhendu Shekhar Ray's Monday walkaway. While giving up his Rajya Sabha MP seat and TMC membership, Ray called Mamata's regime "15-year anarchical rule of the TMC".
Both leaders originally crossed over from the Congress to the Trinamool Congress, with Sukhendu Sekhar Ray joining the TMC back in 2011, while Sushmita Dev jumped ship a decade later in August 2021.
However, the context makes such speculation hardly surprising. With the BJP now firmly in power in West Bengal following a landslide victory in the 2026 Assembly Elections, a succession of senior TMC figures have quietly distanced themselves from Mamata Banerjee. Each departure has come with the customary announcement of remaining independent — yet the whispers of an eventual BJP alignment have proved difficult to shake.
A Tale of Two Strategies
As the TMC's haemorrhaging continues, a striking legal divide has emerged in how its rebels are choosing to make their exits. Rajya Sabha members appear to be opting for clean, outright resignations, whilst their counterparts in the Lok Sabha and the State Assembly are pursuing a far more calculated — and legally precarious — course of action.
It is, at its heart, a story dictated entirely by India's anti-defection law: the Tenth Schedule.
The Rajya Sabha: When Resignation Is the Only Rational Choice
For upper house members such as Ray and Dev, the arithmetic of the anti-defection law left precious little room for manoeuvre. Under the Tenth Schedule, a breakaway faction can claim immunity from disqualification only if it can demonstrate that at least two-thirds of its legislative wing has split away to merge with, or formally support, another party.
With TMC holding 13 seats in the Rajya Sabha, that threshold stood at nine members — a number the rebels could not come close to reaching.
House | Total TMC Strength | Two-Thirds Threshold | Current Rebel Count | Legal Strategy |
Rajya Sabha | 13 MPs | 9 MPs required | 2 (Ray & Dev) | Outright resignation, vacating seats |
Lok Sabha | 29 MPs | 20 MPs required | 20 (Led by Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar) | "Separate Bloc" petitions to the Speaker |
WB Assembly | 210+ MLAs | 140+ MLAs required | 58 (Led by Ritabrata Banerjee) | Dissident bloc backing an alternative Leader of Opposition |
Had Ray and Dev attempted to cross the aisle to the BJP without meeting that threshold, they would have faced near-certain disqualification proceedings — a politically damaging outcome by any measure.
Resignation, then, is the shrewder path. It costs them their current seats, but it preserves their political standing entirely. As free agents, they are now at liberty to join the BJP on their own terms and contest subsequent by-elections — with both the political winds in Bengal and the Northeast appearing to blow in a rather favourable direction.
Where the Rumours Are Coming From
Not everyone within the TMC is leaving quietly, and not all are leaving at all. Some party loyalists have alleged that the BJP has been actively courting their colleagues with offers to switch sides.
Veteran Trinamool MP Saugata Roy has confirmed as much from personal experience. Speaking to news agency ANI, he acknowledged that he had received an approach from the BJP — but said he had turned it down without hesitation. "Yes, I got an offer to join. But I rejected it. I will stay in the party on whose symbol I won the election," he said.
For those who are weighing such an offer rather than refusing it, the legal path ahead is now reasonably well charted. The question is simply one of timing — and nerve.
