Stripped of Jora Phool: is Mamata’s political identity gone?

The Election Commission has temporarily taken away Mamata Banerjee's familiar electoral identity. But has it erased her political existence?That is the bigger question coming from the split in the Trinamool Congress.

On 17 September, the Election Commission froze the use of the All India Trinamool Congress name and the familiar Flowers and Grass, or Jora Phool, symbol for the rival factions and allotted separate names and symbols for the upcoming bypolls. Mamata Banerjee's faction was given the name Mamata All India Trinamool Congress and the Football Player symbol, while the rival faction was allotted the name Democratic Trinamool Congress and the Envelope symbol.

The arrangement is interim; it will apply to the upcoming electoral contest while the larger dispute over the original party identity remains unresolved.

This distinction is important because the Jora Phool has been frozen for now, not permanently transferred to the rival faction, and the Election Commission has yet to deliver a final decision on ownership of the original party name and symbol.

Meanwhile, Mamata Banerjee has challenged the EC's decision in the Supreme Court. So this is not just a story about losing a symbol. It's a story about political identity and whether a political organisation can retain its identity when its most recognisable electoral label and symbol are temporarily separated from its leader.

A symbol is powerful, but it's not the entire party.

Election symbols matter enormously in Indian politics, giving voters a simple visual identity, especially on a ballot paper where there are several parties and candidates. The Jora Phool has been associated with the party for years, and its absence will create an obvious communication challenge for voters used to identifying the party by that symbol in the upcoming bypolls.

But political identity is not created by a symbol alone, it's also built through leadership, candidates, organisation, local networks, campaign history and voter support.

An important number is the result of the 2026 West Bengal Assembly election.

The Trinamool Congress won 80 seats and about 40.68 per cent vote, according to the reported election results.

That was a major decline from the 2021 election when the party won more than 200 Assembly seats and roughly 48 per cent vote. But the 2026 election result shows that the Trinamool entered the current organisational crisis with a substantial electoral base in the days leading up to the split.

That creates an important distinction: Electoral defeat is not the same thing as political disappearance.

But what does that 40 per cent represent?

We need to be careful here.

It would be incorrect to automatically label the entire Trinamool vote as a personal Mamata Banerjee vote.

Voters make decisions for different reasons, including candidate, party, local issues, leadership and political preferences. Election results alone cannot tell us the motivation behind every individual vote.

What the 2026 election result shows is the scale of the vote that the Trinamool candidates received before the current organisational dispute.

Whether that support stays with Mamata Banerjee, moves towards the rival faction or changes in future elections is a separate question.

The same goes for the party's grassroots organisation.

Trinamool has operated through local leaders, booth-level workers, elected representatives and political networks built across several elections.

But it would be premature to assume that all of those structures will automatically stay with one faction.

A split at the top can create competing claims at the grassroots level too.

That makes the next phase of the dispute more complicated than just asking: Who gets the old symbol?

The bigger question is: Which faction can retain the organisational network and electoral support associated with the original Trinamool Congress?

That answer cannot be determined by the EC's interim order alone.

Is "Didi is the symbol" enough?

Mamata Banerjee's political identity has been closely tied with the Trinamool Congress.

She founded All India Trinamool Congress party in 1997 after breaking away from the Congress and the party's electoral politics began in 1998. She went on to lead the party to power in West Bengal in 2011 and has remained its leader.

But saying that every Trinamool voter votes only for Mamata would be going too far. What is significant, however, is that the Election Commission's temporary name for her faction itself includes Mamata Banerjee's name. That makes for an unusual political test. Can a leader carry political recognition beyond the traditional party name and election symbol?

The upcoming bypolls may offer a glimpse. Voters will encounter new names and symbols while the rival factions fight for political recognition.

But even those results will need to be interpreted with care. A bypoll can show how voters behaved in specific constituencies at a specific point in time.

But it cannot settle the larger question of who owns the Trinamool Congress legacy across Bengal.

The real battle is bigger than the ballot paper. The immediate dispute is about a name and a symbol.

The longer battle is about political identity and organisational ownership.

A party that has governed a state for 15 years does not just consist of the symbol on the ballot paper. It also has candidates, workers, local networks, political history and voters.

That doesn't make the symbol unimportant. The Jora Phool is an important part of the Trinamool's electoral identity.

Being unable to use it can have practical consequences during an election campaign.

But it also doesn't follow that freezing the symbol automatically erases Mamata Banerjee's political base.

The more interesting question is not "Has Mamata lost the symbol?" because for the upcoming bypolls, she can't use the original Jora Phool symbol or the original All India Trinamool Congress name under the EC's interim arrangement.

The bigger question is "Can the political support, organisation and identity associated with Mamata survive without the name and symbol that voters have recognised for decades?" That remains an open political question.

For now, the Jora Phool is frozen. But the 2026 election result shows that the Trinamool entered this organisational crisis with a substantial electoral base. Whether that support follows Mamata Banerjee under a new name and symbol is a question the upcoming electoral contests may start to answer.

And that, in turn, is how the battle over the Jora Phool ultimately comes down to more than a symbol.

It's about who gets to inherit the political identity of the Trinamool Congress.