The dates have been going up on Bengali social media since the evening of September 17, as if it is an obituary. Twenty-eight years, and a journey from a hand-drawn flower to a freeze order. A demise usually suggests natural causes, but this is not that.The Election Commission of India’s (ECI) interim order in Dispute Case No. 01 of 2026 came at about half past nine on Thursday night, announced by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. The 14-page order said neither the group led by Mamata Banerjee nor the group led by Arup Roy may use the name All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) or the symbol of the twin flowers on grass (jora phool). Both were told to submit three alternative names and three preferences from the Commission’s list of free symbols by 11 the following morning, or within 14 hours, for the Nandigram and Rejinagar bypolls on October 6. Mamata Banerjee’s candidate, it is being reported, meanwhile, has withdrawn from the Nandigram bypoll. Mamata Banerjee filed her alternatives at 11.36 pm that night, under what her camp called the “strongest protest”. Senior MP Kalyan Banerjee termed the order as illegal and contrary to law. An elated Ritabrata Banerjee, the leader of the camp that has broken away, said, “The private limited company had ended.”On Friday, the Election Commission assigned interim names and symbols to both factions for the upcoming bypolls. Mamata Banerjee’s faction will contest under the banner of “Mamata All India Trinamool Congress” with a footballer as its symbol. The Ritabrata Banerjee-led group was designated the “Ganatantrik Trinamool Congress (Democratic Trinamool Congress)” and allocated an envelope as its symbol.‘A gift’?The order was issued on September 17, coinciding with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s much-hyped birthday. Senior Congress leader K.C. Venugopal labeled it a “birthday-night gift” to Modi from Gyanesh Kumar, describing the freezing of the symbol as a bullet through the heart of Indian democracy.Freezing the AITC name and symbol – after a blatantly unconstitutional hijack by the BJP – is CEC Gyanesh Kumar’s late night birthday gift to Modi ji.Those who fought against the BJP, under Mamata Banerjee’s leadership, are now being given the red carpet to rebel against her… https://t.co/6r2jjFGJf1— K C Venugopal (@kcvenugopalmp) September 17, 2026Venugopal makes a legitimate point. Equally true is that by the time the Commission acted, there was precious little left to freeze. Nearly 60 of the 80 elected MLAs stand with Ritabrata Banerjee, whom the Speaker recognised as Leader of the Opposition (LoP) on June 3 after Sovandeb Chattopadhyay’s nomination was challenged over signatures. Twenty of the party’s 28 MPs defected through a registered shell party listed in the Election Commission’s records, writing to the Speaker to support the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).‘In just four months’Firhad Hakim resigned as Kolkata mayor, while one-time key confidants including Arup Roy, Chandrima Bhattacharya, Arup Biswas, Madan Mitra, and Javed Ahmed Khan have all deserted Mamata Banerjee. Tensions boiled over on July 3 with scuffles and competitive lockouts at party headquarters, as the Enforcement Directorate (ED) froze party bank accounts.Confined largely to Kalighat since May, Banerjee now relies on Facebook Live streams and meetings with a diminishing inner circle. While her claims of state-sponsored obstruction may hold some truth, stopping a determined former chief minister from moving across her own state is easier said than done.Nephew Abhishek Banerjee, whose organisational apparatus drove the party machine for five years, is nowhere on the streets either. The party’s social media handles, which produced political content at an industrial scale for a decade, now go silent for days at a time. To say that a party which won 80 seats and roughly 41% of the vote in April, after dominating Bengal politics for a decade and a half, is in disarray would be a massive understatement. And all this has happened in just four months.Paragraph 15 of the Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968 empowers the Election Commission of India (ECI) to resolve ownership claims between rival factions of a recognised party. In Sadiq Ali vs. Election Commission of India (1972), arising out of the 1969 Congress split, the Supreme Court upheld this authority, ruling that a symbol cannot be divided and that the ECI must consider all relevant facts, including numerical strength in both the legislature and the party organisation. In practice, however, since 2022, the Commission’s focus has narrowed down almost exclusively to legislative strength. Eknath Shinde won the Shiv Sena’s bow and arrow over Uddhav Thackeray, and Ajit Pawar secured the Nationalist Congress Party’s (NCP) clock over its founder, Sharad Pawar. In both instances, legislative numbers were decisive, and in both cases, the victorious faction had defected to align with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Awarding party control based on legislative strength effectively hands the party to whoever orchestrates the defections. This time, too, the Election Commission has done exactly that.Rahul Gandhi captured the political dimension on Thursday night, “First Shiv Sena, then NCP, and now Trinamool Congress. Every time the same pattern. Vote chori, govt chori, now party chori.”पहले शिवसेना, फिर NCP और अब तृणमूल कांग्रेस।हर बार एक ही पैटर्न – BJP और चुनाव आयोग मिलकर एक पार्टी को तोड़ते हैं। फिर उसका चुनाव चिन्ह छीन लिया जाता है।जब पूरी की पूरी पार्टी चोरी हो सकती है, तो करोड़ों भारतीयों के वोट चोरी होना भी हैरानी की बात नहीं।वोट चोरी। सरकार चोरी।…— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) September 18, 2026Claims of BJP’s involvement on recordWhile the Commission’s order naturally makes no mention of the BJP, there is now something more specific on the record than a pattern.Jagadish Chandra Basunia, a two-time Lok Sabha MP on Mamata Banerjee’s ticket, was among the 20 MPs who defected to join the NCPI. Earlier this week, he publicly detailed the operation. According to him, the original plan was to join the BJP directly, but three MPs elected from Muslim-majority consituencies balked. To bypass this, the BJP helped identify a virtually non-existent registered party listed in the ECI’s own records.There was little effort to feign that the NCPI was a genuine middle ground. Basunia said they met four times at the residence of Bhupender Yadav, and that they also met Union home minister Amit Shah. West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari also played a vital role.The rebel faction’s reaction to the symbol freeze reveals who actually bears the cost of the interim order. “We had expected that the twin-flower symbol would remain with us,” said rebel MLA Akhruzzaman. “Since the Election Commission has frozen it, we welcome the decision.”Yet none of this obliges anyone to mourn the Trinamool Congress on its own terms.The party now claiming to be stolen from had indeed engineered one of the most aggressive absorption of rival politicians in Bengal’s post-Independence political history after coming to power in 2011. Zilla parishads, panchayat samitis, gram panchayats, and municipalities flipped en masse as members defected, often following a single high-level visit.The Congress’s strongholds in Murshidabad and Malda were dismantled member by member, while Left local committees across the state were hollowed out. Those who refused to switch sides were met with police cases, teaching opposition workers the coercive weight of an FIR. Curiously, the chief architects of this campaign were Mukul Roy and now BJP CM Suvendu Adhikari.Then and nowThere is a distinct poetic symmetry to the current spectacle.Yet the distinction between then and now matters deeply, beyond the technicality. What the TMC did to the Congress and the CPI(M) was an act executed by a political party against other political parties. This was a wrong that voters could, in principle, undo at the ballot box. What is happening today is being driven through a constitutional authority whose orders bind everyone and whose logic sets the rules for tomorrow. These two wrongs differ in scale because they differ in fundamental nature.While the current symbol freeze remains interim under Paragraph 15, with no final award granted to either faction, the practical precedent has been reinforced for the third time in four years. The definition of a political party in India now hinges entirely on counting those who desert it. It is a test that can be turned against any opposition party, with the outcome decided by how many legislators can be induced to stand in the opposing camp on the day the Commission does the arithmetic.There will be a fourth case, and its outcome is already predictable.The cover of Anandabazar Patrika today, September 18, showing the cover of its December 23, 1997 edition.On December 23, 1997, the front page of Anandabazar Patrika carried the headline that Mamata Banerjee was no longer in the Congress. The strapline described the day’s events as rebellion at noon, expulsion in the afternoon, and a front to be formed. And at the end of the line, three words: “BJP khushi.” The BJP is happy.On Thursday the same newspaper reported that the twin flowers were no longer in Mamata’s hands, and printed its own 1997 front page beside the story.The BJP is happy again.