Kolkata: Two letters to two speakers and voilà – the formalities of a split have been completed. The Trinamool Congress is split three ways, like a grand old circus, except each of the three rings is independent of the other. Or is it?One ring has an obvious ring master – Mamata Banerjee – the founder and owner of the brand Trinamool Congress. However, neither she nor the party is sure of who is a part of her circus. The second ring has a Leader of the Opposition – Ritabrata Banerjee – a first-time member of the legislative assembly and a 2017 inductee, who has been duly recognised by the West Bengal state assembly speaker Rathindra Basu on June 5. The third and final ring is a new bloc of the Trinamool Congress, which has a chief whip in the Lok Sabha – Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar – a long time associate of the former chief minister. Her role was approved by Speaker Om Birla on June 8.The two speakers appear to have decided that all they have to do is recognise the block that sends a letter staking claim to the positions of LoP and chief whip, backed by an unverified two thirds of the total members of the legislatures from the TMC. The Lok Sabha block led by Ghosh Dastidar has unequivocally declared its loyalties to the National Democratic Alliance. The West Bengal state assembly block has not done so.The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) approval of Dastidar’s rebellion is perfectly transparent; her bloc was hosted by Union environment minister and junior mastermind of the party’s West Bengal campaign, Bhupendra Yadav. The presence of Suvendu Adhikari at the meeting further cemented the connection. Moreover, Rajya Sabha MP Sukhendu Shekhar Roy’s resignation from the parliament and the party is a side show; he stayed on when Jawhar Sircar resigned after both lambasted Banerjee’s leadership in light of the R.G. Kar Medical College rape and murder incident. While Sircar’s resignation was an ethical and moral choice; those who remained made a choice, too; preferring righteous self exculpatory statements post the TMC defeat instead of taking responsibility.BJP’s planThe compulsion that drives the BJP is obvious; it needs all the support it can get in the Lok Sabha – from allies and loyalists – because it is a minority government. By adding 19 out of the 29 TMC MPs in Lok Sabha that Dastidar claims as her bloc, and whose signatures were attached to the letter she submitted to Om Birla, from, the NDA’s total strength goes up to 312 members. This is still short of the two thirds that the BJP seeks.The urgency is that BJP failed to pass the electoral reforms-delimitation-women’s reservation bill and constitutional amendment push in parliament in April because the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance – the INDIA bloc – managed to muster its forces and block the passage of a stealthy transformation of the state legislatures by arbitrarily deciding how it would be done. There are more amendments that the BJP wants to bring in, such as the ‘One Nation-One Election’ law that would alter the basics of a democracy, where regimes change whenever the ruling party or coalition loses its majority.The façade of an opposition is necessary for the BJP to push back against charges that India is an “electoral autocracy”. By recognising the Ritabrata Banerjee bloc as part of the opposition, the BJP has maintained the illusion and gained exactly what it wants – a cooperative opposition. The bloc has been coy about disclosing its affiliations. One reason is that the BJP neither needs nor wants the bloc as an officially recognised ally. The party already won a two-thirds majority in the state on May 4. An addition of some 60 MLAs to the same side would, in fact, destroy the BJP’s claim that it respects multiparty politics and an independent opposition. Who will claim the TMC flower?The decision leaves the other LoP nominated by Mamata Banerjee’s bloc dangling. Sovandeb Chattopadhyay is, and is also not, the LoP. Similarly, Kalyan Banerjee is neither here nor there in the Lok Sabha; he was not recognised as chief whip even though he was nominated so by the original TMC.How many legislative parties are claiming to be TMC in the Lok Sabha and the West Bengal state assembly then? The TMC split raises an important question: can there be a floating legislative/parliamentary party, that has no existence beyond the fact that it is recognised by the respective speakers and so exists? By virtue of its description as a legislative/parliamentary block, the assumption is there is a party to which it is attached. The two blocks, one in Kolkata and one in New Delhi have split from the party to which they originally belonged. Be it Ghosh Dastidar or Ritabrata Banerjee, both fought elections on Trinamool Congress tickets. Ms Ghosh Dastidar won from Barasat in the 2024 Lok Sabha election; Ritabrata Banerjee won from Uluberia Purba in Howrah district on May 4. The retention of the brand name is opportunistic and expedient, for the Trinamool name enables both entities to conduct the business of being legislators with ease.The name gameThe Election Commission of India and the judiciary will have to decide who owns the brand. There is a precedent. In Maharashtra, Sharad Pawar who founded the Nationalist Congress Party is no longer the owner of the name, or of the clock symbol; EC assigned both to the breakaway founded by late NCP leader Ajit Pawar. The Shiv Sena and its bow and arrow symbol, similarly, are owned by Eknath Shinde now, after he broke up the party.History, however, confirms that the Trinamool Congress was founded by Mamata Banerjee in 1998, after she broke away from the Congress. She created the grass flowers symbol to reflect the political base she wanted to mobilise and lead. Though Dastidar was with Banerjee when the latter founded the party, she was by no means the owner of the brand. Ritabrata Banerjee, on the other hand, is a newbie who restarted his political career with the TMC after his expulsion from the Communist Party of India (Marxist). He is not an original by any means.The Trinamool name clearly retains a certain mystique and, therefore, a value that both blocs seek to hold on to. Neither is prepared to cut loose. Despite their charges of abuse of power, misuse of government systems and apparatus, and of the party functioning as a “state party”, the 60 “rebel” (sic) MLAs – all of whom contested as Trinamool Congress candidates — appear to believe that adopting a new name and forming a new party would be a risky political move.They want the name without the responsibility of having lived with the corruption and the intimidation for years. Having contested on the symbol and used the party’s machinery to campaign and win, the disassociation is dissembling. In fact, their rebellion is confirmation of the BJP’s campaign narrative from way back in 2021 that the TMC andMamata Banerjee have used intimidation, violence to siphon money out of government projects and schemes, institutionalising corruption and leasing out territory to musclemen to gather in the votes and keep the population cowed.This is what happened to the Communist Party name – multiple splits have happened since 1964, when the party split into CPI and the CPI-Marxist. And then there was another split establishing the CPI (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation; that split even further, creating various Maoist groups that have retained the Communist Party name. A name holds a lot of power, and that is difficult to defeat. The forthcoming inevitable fight over the Trinamool name and symbol will be decided by the poll body and the courts. It will then be decided by the public when the next round of elections happen – which is likely to be this year’s end, when the election to the municipalities and corporations are due.The matter would, however, need to be settled well ahead of the 2029 Lok Sabha election, crucial for the BJP’s plans to establish its overarching control of India’s political space by creating a cooperative democracy where the opposition remains just a formality. Shikha Mukherjee is a Kolkata-based commentator.