The Trinamool Congress (TMC) has announced that the campaign poster for its flagship July 21 rally event will exclusively feature the party’s supreme leader and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, omitting the image of All India General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee— by his own instruction. This declaration was made by senior party MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay following a high-level preparatory meeting held at the party's Bhawanipur office on Priyanath Mallick Road on Saturday. According to Bandyopadhyay, the poster design, circulated via pen drive from the party’s Camac Street headquarters, features only Mamata Banerjee.
“Abhishek Banerjee himself conveyed that, since he will not be physically present at the rally, his image must not appear in the poster,” Bandyopadhyay stated, seeking to quash any potential speculation.
This deliberate omission comes amid longstanding internal rumblings over Abhishek’s visibility within the party’s promotional material— a matter that previously triggered factional unease. The tension traces back to the Netaji Indoor rally in November 2023, where the absence of Abhishek's image on posters sparked discontent, with leaders such as Kunal Ghosh publicly raising objections.
Although Ghosh’s political influence within the party has since waned, the episode exposed deeper tussles within the Trinamool Congress over image politics and organisational authority.
Party insiders observe that the ‘center of gravity’ within the TMC has perceptibly shifted over the past year. Despite Abhishek’s growing prominence as the party’s youth icon and strategist, Mamata Banerjee has reasserted her command in both governance and organisation. In closed-door meetings, she has reportedly made it clear that she intends to lead the party for the next ten years, firmly reinstating herself as the irreplaceable nucleus of Trinamool.
Earlier this year, another controversy brewed around the 2025 party calendar, which was circulated from Abhishek’s office. The calendar featured both Mamata and Abhishek— but with the latter’s photograph noticeably larger in proportion. Once this reached the upper echelons of the state leadership, instructions were swiftly issued: the calendar was to be discarded. District leaders were explicitly told not to use it.
This incident intensified the internal narrative that symbolism matters deeply in a party where optics are tightly controlled and hierarchy is zealously guarded.
The July 21 rally holds particular strategic weight, as the party begins shaping its narrative ahead of the 2026 West Bengal Assembly elections. Trinamool’s state president Subrata Bakshi has reportedly instructed all district units to maximize turnout, aiming for a record-breaking show of strength in Kolkata.
“This will be the largest rally the city has ever seen by a single party. We will set a new precedent,” Bandyopadhyay declared with confidence.
The decision to place Mamata Banerjee alone at the visual forefront of this political spectacle sends a clear message — within and outside the party —that the matriarch of Trinamool is firmly in control and the 2026 battlefield will be fought in her name, with her face leading the charge.
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