After losing national party status, TMC exploring legal options to challenge EC decision

KOLKATA: After losing the national party status, the Trinamool Congress is exploring legal options to challenge the decision of the Election Commission, a party source said.

The EC withdrew the national party status of the TMC, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Communist Party of India (CPI) on Monday.

"The party is exploring legal options to challenge this decision by EC," a TMC source said on Monday.

The Mamata Banerjee-led party did not issue any official reaction. The opposition BJP mocked the TMC following the development.

"TMC lost the national party status & will be recognised as a regional party. Didi's aspiration to grow TMC find no place as people know TMC runs a most corrupt, full of appeasement & terror govt. Govt's fall is also certain as people of WB will not tolerate this govt for long," BJP state president Sukanta Majumdar said in a tweet.

In an order issued on Monday, the EC said that NCP and TMC will be recognised as state parties in Nagaland and Meghalaya respectively, based on their performance in the recently concluded assembly elections.

The TMC was formed on January 1, 1998, after West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee left Congress to form her own political party.

After two unsuccessful attempts in 2001 and 2006, the party came to power by defeating the Left Front in 2011, riding the crest of massive public outrage against the communists.

The party, in recent years, has tried to expand its footprint across the country to pose a direct challenge to the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. However, the efforts did not bear much fruit.

The BJP, Congress, CPI(M), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), National People's Party (NPP) and the AAP are now national parties.