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With former Congress MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury officially stepping aside as the West Bengal Congress president, the party has started the process of charting its path towards rebuilding its organisation in the state ahead of the 2026 Assembly elections. The All India Congress Committee (AICC), according to sources, is looking to establish a new organisational structure, create a roadmap with the elections in mind, and possibly re-evaluate its stand on the Trinamool Congress (TMC).
On Monday, 21 leaders of the West Bengal Pradesh Congress (WBPCC) met AICC general secretary (organisation) K C Venugopal in New Delhi. Senior Congress leaders from the state such as Chowdhury, Pradip Bhattacharya, Deepa Dasmunsi, Amitava Chakraborty, and the party’s sole Lok Sabha MP from the state, Isha Khan Choudhury, were among those present at the meeting. The state leaders, insiders said, left it to the high command to take the call on who will replace Adhir and emphasised the need to rejuvenate the organisation at the grassroots level. They also called on the AICC leadership to establish new committees in the state, from the block level up, and induct fresh faces, sources said.
With Adhir now out of the picture in the state, sources said the AICC would have a relook at its stand on the TMC. During Adhir’s tenure, the state Congress was steadfast in its opposition to the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC though nationally the two parties are part of the Opposition INDIA alliance.
However, finding his successor will be a challenging task. A senior Congress leader said, on the condition of anonymity, “There will be a void without Adhir Chowdhury as the state president. He was the last man standing against both the TMC and the BJP. He took the pressure from the national leadership but did not budge from his anti-TMC stand. I do not know whether the AICC will be able to find a person suitable to replace him.”
What happened at the meeting
After the meeting on Monday night, AICC Bengal in-charge Ghulam Ahmad Mir told reporters, “As you know, after the Lok Sabha results, Adhir Chowdhury submitted his resignation to the high command. Talks on Bengal were held; we had called 25 leaders for one-on-one meetings. Discussions were held as to what needs to be done there before the 2026 Assembly polls. Now a roadmap will be made, including a party structure.”
Dasmunsi, an AICC general secretary and former Raiganj MP who is also a vocal critic of Mamata, said, “The road ahead is tough in West Bengal. Nothing will happen suddenly. We have no MLAs and only one MP in the state. During the Left Front rule, we knew about rigging the polls. But now it has taken a scientific form and the form of terrorism. Now voters will have their job cards (MGNREGS) and other government schemes snatched if they do not vote for the ruling party in Bengal. The administration has also become a cadre for the ruling party, with central forces looking the other way.”
Asked if the party would re-evaluate its stand on the TMC, Dasmunsi said, “There is also a question that we are part of the INDIA alliance but in Bengal, the fight is against the BJP as well as the TMC. This raises questions. On the other side too, the TMC is fighting against us in Bengal despite being in the INDIA alliance. Then there is polarisation in Bengal like we have never seen earlier. It is tough but we have to rebuild our organisation slowly.”
Amitava Chakraborty, an AICC member, said all leaders from the state expressed their individual opinions at the Monday meeting. “Everyone got five to six minutes to speak,” Chakraborty told The Indian Express from New Delhi. “I am an organisation man and I emphasised rebuilding the organisation from the block and district level again and bringing in fresh faces. At present, there is little organisation in the state. First, we need to rebuild the organisation and then think about alliance (with the Left).”
On who will succeed Adhir, AICC member Subhankar Sarkar said, “We have left it to the AICC to decide who will be the next state president. There is a need for change from the grassroots to the state level. That is what I emphasised at the meeting.”
According to Congress insiders, Adhir has said that he was upset during the Lok Sabha elections when party president Mallikarjun Kharge publicly said he was “nobody to make decisions” on whether Mamata Banerjee would be a part of the INDIA bloc or not. Kharge made the comment in May in the midst of the Lok Sabha elections. With Adhir refusing to budge on his opposition to Mamata, saying he would not welcome a person trying to “finish the Congress”, Kharge attempted to downplay the episode and called the senior leader a “ladaku sipahi (combative soldier)” of the party.
“During the elections, Mallikarjun Kharge said, if necessary, I would be kept out, which upset me,” Congress sources quoted Adhir as saying. “The election results were also not good for the party in West Bengal. Even though I was the temporary WBPCC president, it was my responsibility. After which I told Kharge ji that if possible, you replace me.”
The former Baharampur MP is believed to have said that though he knew he had been serving as the WBPCC president in a temporary capacity, as per the rules laid down in the party constitution, since Kharge took charge as Congress national president in late 2022, he did not know his run at the helm of the state unit was over. “I was aware that the meeting had been called under my presidency and I was still the West Bengal Congress president but during the meeting, Ghulam Ali Mir said, ‘The former president is also here.’ At the time, I got to know I had become former president (of West Bengal Congress),” Congress insiders quoted Adhir as saying.
