Only a very naïve observer of Indian politics will believe that a first-time turncoat MLA is independently leading a rebellion that has stripped one of India’s tallest regional politicians of the party she founded nearly three decades ago and the election symbol she once famously sketched to announce her break from the Congress. The existential crisis in the Trinamool Congress (TMC) — till six months ago the third-largest Opposition force in Parliament — is at once familiar and unprecedented. Other Opposition parties have haemorrhaged support after a string of losses, and shrunk into shadows of their former selves, but the TMC’s poly-crisis is farcical on a whole new level. A majority of its Lok Sabha members overnight joined a nondescript party that didn’t net even 1,000 votes in the only election it ever fought — only for one lawmaker to claim that this little-known outfit was merely a pitstop on the way to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Meanwhile, a majority of its assembly legislators rebelled against party general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, but not quite against the party, and elected a separate leader who is now recognised as the leader of the Opposition in the assembly. And in the Rajya Sabha, some TMC members have resigned, been promptly renominated by the BJP, and returned to the Upper House. All this is happening after an assembly election whose victor explicitly declared that no defector would be admitted or allowed to whitewash their sins. The cordial relations between the new government and the various shades of TMC rebels suggest that the commitment is being honoured largely in the breach.

There are two related but independent questions here: one........

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