4 min readKolkataJun 11, 2026 04:01 AM IST
First published on: Jun 10, 2026 at 12:09 PM IST
In another blow to the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress, senior leader Sushmita Dev quit the party and resigned as its Rajya Sabha MP today. In a letter to Vice President and Rajya Sabha chairman CP Radhakrishnan, Sushmita Dev requested that her resignation be accepted with immediate effect. Earlier, senior Trinamool leader and Rajya Sabha MP Sukhendu Sekhar Roy gave up his Rajya Sabha membership.
Sushmita Dev has met Assam Chief Minister and BJP leader Himanta Biswa Sarma, sparking speculation about her next move. Neither she nor BJP functionaries from Assam immediately responded to queries about the same.
The development comes amid a massive meltdown within the Trinamool Congress, which suffered a crushing defeat in the recently held West Bengal Assembly election. Barely a month after losing power in Bengal, Trinamool has started unravelling. Earlier, 60 of its 80 MLAs rebelled against Mamata Banerjee’s choice of Sovandeb Chatterjee as the Leader of the Opposition. Shortly after, a rebel faction claimed that 20 out of the party’s 28 Lok Sabha MPs want to side with the NDA. And now, two Trinamool Rajya Sabha MPs have resigned.
Trinamool loses Assam face
Sushmita Dev was a Rajya Sabha MP from Bengal, although she is from Assam’s Barak Valley region. She joined the Trinamool Congress in 2021, after quitting the Congress months after Assam assembly elections. Soon after, the Trinamool nominated her as its candidate for the Rajya Sabha. She had been one of the Congress’s most prominent faces in Assam and was known to be close to Rahul Gandhi. She has earlier served as an MLA and a Lok Sabha MP for the Congress.
Sushmita Dev comes from a prominent Congress family, and is the daughter of the Congress leader and former Union Minister Santosh Mohan Dev. She was considered the face of the Congress in the Barak Valley when she was with the party.
Since her entry into the Trinamool Congress, she has been its most prominent face in Assam, and some would argue, its only face in Assam. As the Trinamool Congress struggled to find a foothold in Assam, its primary focus remained on the primary Bengali-speaking region of the Barak Valley led by Sushmita Dev’s charisma and leadership. Despite that, the party failed to register any wins in the Barak Valley, and its only significant win came in this legislative assembly election in which Sherman Ali Ahmed won from the Baghbor assembly constituency in western Assam, a victory that can be largely attributed to his individual appeal since he had joined the Trinamool days before the election.
Post-poll meltdown
Barely a month has passed since Trinamool lost power in Bengal and the party is already struggling for survival. The first blow came when 60 of its 80 MLAs, led by Ritabrata Banerjee, defied the party leadership’s choice of Leader of Opposition. The meltdown then shifted to Delhi, as senior leader Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar wrote to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, claiming that 20 Lok Sabha MPs want to be recognised as a separate bloc and want to align with NDA.
In Rajya Sabha, the first blow for Trinamool came when senior party leader Sukhendu Sekhar Ray resigned from the primary membership of the party and as a member of the Upper House.
Asked why he had resigned, Ray hit out at the party and told The Indian Express, “Because of the situation that was prevailing in the party for a long time.” To a question on whether he will be joining another party, he said, “I have spent 59 years in politics. So I have to take a call at the appropriate time after introspection and retrospection.”
Sushmita Dev met Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma today 
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