Former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has approached the Supreme Court against the Election Commission’s interim decision to freeze the All India Trinamool Congress name and its Flowers and Grass symbol amid a split within the party.

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• Mamata Banerjee filed a petition in the Supreme Court on 18 September 2026 challenging the Election Commission’s interim order freezing the All India Trinamool Congress name and its reserved Flowers and Grass symbol.
• The dispute followed a split within the Trinamool Congress after rival factions led by Banerjee and Ritabrata Banerjee, the Leader of Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, both staked claim to the party’s name, symbol and organisational control.
• The rift began in June 2026 when 58 rebel MLAs elected Ritabrata Banerjee as Leader of Opposition instead of the Mamata camp’s nominee, marking the party’s first split in its 28-year history.
• Around 60 of the party’s 80 MLAs and 20 of its 28 Lok Sabha MPs subsequently shifted allegiance away from the Mamata-led faction.
• The Election Commission’s interim order, issued on 17 September 2026 after hearing both factions, held that the dispute requires substantive determination under the Election Symbols (Reservation and Allotment) Order, 1968.
• The Commission then allotted separate interim names and symbols: ‘Mamata All India Trinamool Congress’ with a ‘football player’ symbol, and ‘Democratic Trinamool Congress’ with an ‘envelope’ symbol, for the 6 October bypolls to Nandigram and Rejinagar.
• Banerjee’s petition names the Election Commission and Ritabrata Banerjee as respondents and was filed through advocate Abhinav Singh.
• Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal mentioned the plea before the Supreme Court on 21 September 2026, seeking urgent listing, and the Court agreed to list the matter.
• Sibal told the Court that proceedings before the Election Commission had begun in June 2026, with a reply filed in July, but the symbol was frozen only after the bypoll notification was issued.
• Legal commentary has drawn parallels with the Election Commission’s 1969 decision on the Congress party split involving Indira Gandhi, where the Commission relied on the numerical strength of MPs and MLAs to recognise the real party, a decision later upheld by the Supreme Court.
• The case will test how Paragraph 15 of the Symbols Order, which lets the Election Commission decide disputes between rival claimants to a party’s name and symbol, is applied to an ongoing split with an election already underway.