TMCP Foundation Day: Unity or Wild Abuse?
Aug 30, 2026 - By Ashutosh Roy Current AffairsEducation & TechElection AnalysisPoliticsRegional UpdatesWest Bengal Politics
Mudslinging on TMC Foundation Day 2026
TMCP Foundation Day kicked off with its usual dose of high-octane political drama, leaving onlookers wondering if they had bought tickets to an inspirational youth rally or an unfiltered street brawl.
Every year on August 28, political leaders promise to celebrate and empower students. But like clockwork, the event quickly turns into a shouting match filled with complaints, personal fights, and political anger. If you came to hear about helping students, you likely walked away with a headache instead.
With two separate factions fighting for physical space and political real estate in Kolkata, even the High Court had to step in to divide the venues. The Kalighat camp rallied at Cathedral Road, while rival leaders set up shop at Rani Rashmoni Avenue. For anyone tracking West Bengal political updates, it was clear from minute one that this rally was less about education and more about institutional survival.
Watch the tug of war even on the Foundation Day of Students Union.
TMCP Foundation Day: Is It TMCP or Chatra Parishad (CP)?
Before tuning into the speeches, we need to address the awkward truth nobody on stage wants to discuss.
Wicked tongues in Bengal’s political corridors frequently point out a curious historical glitch. Detractors argue that this is not originally the Trinamool Chhatra Parishad’s foundation day at all. Instead, critics claim Mamata Banerjee took the original National Congress Chhatra Parishad foundation day and rebranded it as her own after breaking away to form the TMC.
Now, nobody is threatening a copyright lawsuit here, mostly because the Congress hasn’t bothered to take the matter to court in decades. But it certainly sets a bizarre, ironic tone for a student union foundation day.
Is it a celebrated milestone of genuine youth activism, or a hijacked historical date wrapped in fresh party flags? The debate pops up every August like clockwork, but the speakers on stage conveniently skip the history lesson to dive straight into verbal combat.
The Congress-backed Chhatra Parishad marked its 73rd Foundation Day at Mahajati Sadan on August 28 also. But whatever you do, don’t ask if the crowd was made up of actual college students or their fathers!
Where Were the Students at TMCP Foundation Day?
You would naturally expect a youth rally to focus on modern education standards, career growth, university infrastructure, campus safety, and long-overdue student union elections. Instead, actual student issues received mere minutes of airtime.
Mamata Banerjee took the mic and offered a brief reminder that she, too, is a product of student politics. Fair enough – that is historically accurate. But here is the catch: half of her current opposition camp claims the exact same background!
Leaders like Ritabrata Banerjee and Firhad Hakim also rose from the student union battlegrounds. One expected fiery, inspiring speeches to energize young minds toward academic excellence. What the audience got instead was high-decibel political mudslinging between rival factions.
Instead of talking about syllabus upgrades or campus placements, the stage sounded like a courtroom trial. Major outlets like The Indian Express reported how the speeches quickly veered off into election theft allegations, police brutality, and regional feuds. If you were a college freshman tuning in for guidance, you learned more about political vengeance than how to pass your upcoming exams.
TMCP Foundation Day: A Rally for Students or a Platform for Politics?
Pay close attention, and the pattern becomes obvious. Mamata Banerjee and the TMC leadership turned TMCP Foundation Day into a high-decibel political campaign rather than a forum for student issues. Just like the July 21 Martyrs’ Day rally, an event that was supposed to serve a specific purpose has morphed into a platform for raw politics and grandstanding.
| Year | Main Venue | Key People on / Around the Dais | Main Thrust of Mamata Banerjee’s Speech |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Mayo Road, Kolkata | Mamata Banerjee, Abhishek Banerjee, Firhad Hakim, Sujit Bose, Chandrima Bhattacharya, Shantanu Sen and TMCP leaders | Defence of TMC amid the Partha Chatterjee and Anubrata Mondal arrests. Mamata attacked the BJP, ED and CBI, arguing that wrongdoing by individuals should not be used to brand the entire party as corrupt. |
| 2023 | Mayo Road, Kolkata | Mamata Banerjee, Abhishek Banerjee, Trinankur Bhattacharya and senior TMC leaders | Focused heavily on politics and the upcoming Lok Sabha election. Mamata warned that the BJP could bring forward the election, criticised Governor C. V. Ananda Bose over universities and promised student-union elections after Durga Puja. |
| 2024 | Mayo Road, Kolkata | Mamata Banerjee, Abhishek Banerjee, Trinankur Bhattacharya and senior TMC leaders | The RG Kar rape-murder dominated the programme. Mamata dedicated the Foundation Day to the murdered doctor, expressed sympathy for her family and demanded tougher punishment for rape. |
| 2025 | Mayo Road, Kolkata | Mamata Banerjee, Abhishek Banerjee, Trinankur Bhattacharya and senior TMC leaders | Strong focus on the SIR and electoral-roll revision. Mamata accused the BJP of attempting to remove voters’ names and urged people to resist what she described as attempts to deprive citizens of their voting rights. |
| 2026 | Cathedral Road, Kolkata | Mamata Banerjee, Abhishek Banerjee, Kalyan Banerjee and senior TMC leaders; a separate rival programme was led by Ritabrata Banerjee | A post-election comeback message. Following TMC’s defeat in the 2026 Bengal Assembly election, Mamata said TMC would return to power very soon, accused the BJP of capturing Bengal through electoral manipulation and urged supporters not to lose confidence. |
Just look at the lineup. Sujit Bose is sitting in prison following his ED arrest, while Firhad Hakim and Chandrima Bhattacharya have jumped ship to join the Ritabrata faction.
Even Anubrata Mandal, a loyalist Mamata for whom she slapped the BJP Government from the same TMCP Foundation Day Platform back in 2022, has walked away and switched sides. Santanu Sen has also left Mamata Banerjee.
Still, she still insists a swift return to power is right around the corner! It raises a glaring question: why are her most trusted aides abandoning ship, and will Mamata finally look in the mirror?
TMCP Foundation Day 2025: The Santa Dutta vs. Bratya Basu Saga
Let’s go down through the memory lanes. The 2025 episode shows how little the political machinery cares about actual students during TMCP Foundation Day. Just look back at the dramatic showdown involving Calcutta University’s officiating Vice Chancellor, Dr. Santa Dutta in 2025.
When the state higher education department issued an administrative plea urging Calcutta University to clear the schedule on August 28 for the TMCP rally, Santa Dutta stood her ground. Facing scheduled BA-LLB and B.Com semester exams affecting nearly 30,000 candidates, the VC and the CU Syndicate flatly refused to declare a political holiday.
Her reasoning was simple and principled: academic calendars are set around official government holidays, not political party events. Altering exam schedules for a ruling party’s rally would shatter 168 years of institutional autonomy. But in Bengal politics, standing up for academic discipline comes with a heavy price tag.
What followed was an absolute spectacle of political outrage. The then Education Minister, Bratya Basu, publicly unleashed his wrath upon the VC. In a shocking verbal assault, Basu openly mocked Dr. Santa Dutta, sarcastically declaring that “even if a crow drapes itself in peacock feathers, it remains a crow“. He further claimed she had no right to enter the campus and accused her of acting out of personal vendetta against student leaders.
Ironically, a couple of Universities tried to toe to the party diktats. They declared 28th August 2025 as a holiday and called off the scheduled examinations.
As covered in detailed press reports by ET Education, state-backed student agitators gheraoed the VC’s office for hours, shouting slogans and burning notices. Rather than protecting academic independence, the state’s education leadership actively backed the agitators.
When a university VC gets targeted, insulted, and gheraoed simply for keeping exam halls open for students on TMCP Foundation Day, any claim that the event celebrates “education” becomes impossible to take seriously.
Fortunately, those chaotic days are behind us. With the new BJP government taking charge, one can only hope that universities and colleges will finally stop being used as political battlegrounds.
Threats, Billboards, and Police Misuse Complaints
Beyond the university squabbles, the main rally stage dissolved into personal score-settling and dramatic accusations:
- Abhishek Banerjee’s Warning: He declared in no uncertain terms that “traitors” and deserters who left the faction would never be welcomed back into the fold, regardless of the political cost.
- The Camac Street Complaint: Mamata Banerjee vented deep frustration over pulled-down billboards near the Camac Street office, calling out the sudden misuse of the police force by opposing authorities.
- The Irony Factor: Hearing complaints about police misuse from a leadership that commanded the state machinery for fifteen long years is enough to make even a horse laugh.
Take political speeches with a pinch of salt. A party that built itself by poaching opposition leaders using every trick in the book can hardly afford to turn away defectors today, despite Abhishek’s warning. When a party loses power and starts crumbling from internal fights, turning people away is a luxury they don’t have. In desperate times like these, they’ll take whoever they can get.
Meanwhile, leaders from the opposing side fired back from their own stages, asking why Abhishek Banerjee wasn’t facing immediate administrative action – a question that continues to echo across Bengal politics analysis while the current administration maintains a stoic silence.
“When political speeches focus more on billboard disputes, police grudges, and punishing rebellious VCs than student welfare, you know the event has completely lost its compass”.
Live broadcasts by channels like ABP Ananda on YouTube captured the sheer absurdity of the moment. Side-by-side feeds showed two different rallies claiming to represent the “real” student voice, leaving viewers scratching their heads in disbelief.
When former allies split and start slinging mud, dirty secrets inevitably spill out. Firhad Hakim even targeted Mamata Banerjee for skipping student union elections and letting admission syndicate agents overrun the student wing.
Daydreams of a Swift Political Comeback
The biggest surprise of the day came when Mamata Banerjee assured her remaining supporters not to worry, claiming Trinamool would return to power “very soon”.
Considering the current political realities where the opposition holds the reins and the government is barely 100 days old – a period where even the standard political honeymoon phase hasn’t expired – this claim raised serious eyebrows among political observers.
Unless she is consulting a secretive astrological chart, the claim feels completely disconnected from ground realities.
Freedom of speech is a democratic right, so if political leaders want to indulge in daydreams, nobody can stop them. But planning a monsoon tour across muddy districts without state machinery privileges, official escorts, or green corridors seems like a steep, slippery climb.
Without the former luxuries of administration, the old playbook of intimidation, high-volume threats, and cheap political grandstanding simply loses its bite. The power dynamic has shifted, and shouting louder on stage doesn’t alter the math in the assembly.
Furthermore, if anyone gets injured during these rainy district trips, there won’t be a guaranteed “Green Corridor” to rush them straight to Kolkata’s SSKM Hospital. Given the state of rural healthcare facilities – which didn’t transform overnight in fifteen years – expecting a three-month-old administration to perform miracles is pure fantasy. Former health ministers ought to know that better than anyone else.
West Bengal Political Analysis: The Factional Divide
What this year’s TMCP Foundation Day made glaringly obvious is the deep structural crack within the youth wing.
Instead of presenting a unified front against political rivals, the event became a battle of egos. On one side, you had leaders trying to convince the crowd that the party is on the verge of a historic resurrection. On the other side, rival leaders openly mocked those claims, calling the fiery rhetoric “more like a cat than a tiger”.
When a student rally turns into an arena for TMC vs Opposition news drama, the actual students become background props. They are brought in from distant districts to fill plastic chairs, wave flags in the sweltering heat, and cheer on cue while senior leaders settle personal scores on stage.
The tragic part? The genuine concerns of Bengal’s youth, rising unemployment, delayed state exams, campus violence, and deteriorating college infrastructure, get completely buried under the noise of political mudslinging.
Knowledge Mart Exclusive
Let the political threats and counter-threats continue if they must. Inspire the students if you can. But instead of promising an unrealistic overnight return to power, political leaders should focus on building a mature, constructive opposition.
Respecting academic institutions, leaving university VCs like Santa Dutta alone to run exams, and accepting defeat with grace are the first real steps toward genuine political recovery. The stage of TMCP Foundation Day should belong to the youth, their aspirations, and their future, not to recycled political grievances, administrative bullying, and endless mudslinging.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
1. What is TMCP Foundation Day and when is it celebrated?
Trinamool Chhatra Parishad (TMCP) Foundation Day is the annual anniversary of the student wing of the Trinamool Congress, celebrated every year on August 28 across West Bengal.
2. What was the historical controversy regarding the date of TMCP Foundation Day?
Political critics often point out that August 28 was originally established as the foundation day of the Congress-affiliated Chhatra Parishad. When Mamata Banerjee broke away from the Congress to form the TMC, the foundation date was effectively retained for TMCP, leading to long-standing political debates over its historical roots.
3. Why were there two separate TMCP Foundation Day rallies in Kolkata in 2026?
Due to intense factionalism within the party, two rival groups sought to hold rallies at the same venue. The Calcutta High Court intervened to allocate separate locations, directing the Mamata Banerjee faction to Cathedral Road and the rival Ritabrata faction to Rani Rashmoni Avenue.
4. What was the 2025 clash involving Calcutta University VC Dr. Santa Dutta and Bratya Basu?
In 2025, higher education officials requested Calcutta University to clear the schedule on August 28 for the TMCP rally. Officiating VC Dr. Santa Dutta refused, prioritizing scheduled BA-LLB and B.Com exams for nearly 30,000 students. This led to a fierce public backlash from then-Education Minister Bratya Basu and campus protests by student agitators.
5. What key political statements were made by Abhishek Banerjee during the 2026 event?
Abhishek Banerjee took a firm stance against party defectors, publicly warning that leaders who deserted the faction during difficult political stretches would never be accepted back into the fold.
6. Why did Mamata Banerjee criticize the administration and police during her speech?
Mamata Banerjee expressed frustration over the removal of party billboards near the Camac Street office and accused the police and administration of bias and high-handedness under the current political landscape.
7. How did rival leaders respond to Mamata Banerjee’s claims of a quick political comeback?
Opposition and rival faction leaders, including Ritabrata Banerjee, mocked the claims of a swift return to power, criticizing the rhetoric and accusing the main stage of ignoring key student issues like union elections and campus welfare.
8. Were actual student issues addressed during TMCP Foundation Day 2026?
Very little time was dedicated to core student issues. Instead of addressing academic reforms, campus infrastructure, or delayed college union elections, the event primarily served as a platform for political mudslinging, personal score-settling, and party strategy.
10 Key Takeaways on TMCP Foundation Day 2026:
- Two Stages, One Party: High Court intervention split Kolkata into two separate rallies – Cathedral Road and Rani Rashmoni Avenue – exposing a massive factional rift on TMCP Foundation Day.
- Hijacked Historical Dates: Critics still point out the irony that TMCP celebrates August 28 as its foundation day, a date originally established by the Congress Chhatra Parishad decades ago.
- Students Left Out of the Equation: Despite being a youth foundation event, actual student issues like campus infrastructure, job opportunities, and college elections got practically zero airtime.
- The Academic Autonomy Clash: The event recalled last year’s clash where officiating CU VC Dr. Santa Dutta stood her ground to hold exams on August 28, facing intense political heat from then-Education Minister Bratya Basu.
- No Return for Deserters: Abhishek Banerjee made a public vow on stage that “traitors” who abandoned the party during tough political stretches will never be allowed back into the fold.
- Grudges Over Camac Street: Personal billboard disputes at the Camac Street party office took center stage, with leaders dramatically accusing local administration and police of high-handedness.
- Selective Complaints of Police Misuse: Protesters and rival factions openly mocked complaints about police misuse coming from leaders who commanded the state machinery for fifteen solid years.
- Bold Claims of a Swift Comeback: Despite being barely 100 days into the new assembly term and sitting in opposition, Mamata Banerjee claimed her party would return to power “very soon”.
- District Tours Without Royal Privileges: Plans for monsoon district tours were met with skepticism, as travel without administrative perks or guaranteed “Green Corridors” presents a tough road ahead.
- Mudslinging Over Leadership: Instead of focusing on student empowerment, the entire day devolved into high-decibel political score-settling, leaving actual campus issues far behind.