Spotlight on TMC feud as WhatsApp chats leaked

It was scheduled to be a visit to the Election Commission of India (ECI) by a senior team of parliamentarians from the Trinamool Congress (TMC) on April 4, ostensibly to submit a representation on the controversy around duplicate Elector Photo Identification Cards that was signed by the party's MPs.

- Saubhadra Chatterji

NEW DELHI:

But, as gleefully shared by the Bharatiya Janata Party's spokesperson and also chief of its IT Cell, Amit Malviya, it ended up becoming a slanging match between the TMC's lawmakers, one that continued well into Friday night on a WhatsApp group of the party's MPs.

Then, on Tuesday, two senior parliamentarians of the party spoke to the press, blaming each other and confirming that tensions were simmering within the parliamentary contingent of Bengal's ruling party. The TMC called the spat "demoralising".

The purported chats feature angry exchanges between Serampore MP Kalyan Banerjee and Bardhaman-Durgapur MP Kirti Azad, with the former saying the latter was "thrown out of the BJP" for "internal politics" and the latter asking the former not to act like "a juvenile delinquent" and accusing him of having had "one too many".