Saayoni Ghosh is not a paltu, voters are OG paltu
The voters of Saayoni Ghosh's Jadavpur constituency flipped before she did. They are the original paltus. And, what does a true representative of the people do if not swing with the voters' mood?
Now that the dust has more or less settled on the TMC rebellion, let us examine what happened in the wake of the 2026 West Bengal election and check whether everyone dumping on the rebels is justified. It's an emotional subject, so let us dissect the emotional atyachar of playing victim while victimising the poor Bengali rebels. You always said you loved Mamata because she was a rebel. Now you hate the word.
The TMC turncoats who once sang paeans to Mamata Banerjee with the fervour of Pannalal Bhattacharya delivering Shyama Sangeet, who called the BJP every name their Bangla vocabulary could accommodate, and who have now signed a letter to Speaker Om Birla quietly merging into something called the Nationalist Citizen Party of India. Nobody had heard of the NCPI a month ago. Now everyone has a strong opinion and a hilarious joke about it.
Those who are unhappy are forwarding the old videos. Here is Saayoni Ghosh, beloved Jadavpur MP, actress, youth-wing president, calling the BJP anti-Bengal, anti-democracy, anti-everything. Here she is in June 2026, among 20 MPs formally splitting from TMC and heading into the arms of a party that they did not know existed when the results were declared. The question being asked in television studios, in courtrooms of public opinion, in every WhatsApp group with a forward-loving uncle: how could they flip like this? Have they no shame? Have they no ideology? Have they no principles? No scruples, go ma go!
Let us pause. Let us ask a different question: what about the absolute lack of loyalty of the people of Jadavpur?
In May 2024, Saayoni Ghosh won the Lok Sabha constituency by 2,58,201 votes. She received 45.83% of the vote, with six of the seven assembly segments under Jadavpur giving her party the massive lead. The verdict was not a win, it was a coronation. In the 2021 Assembly elections, Bhangar, the ISF stronghold, voted for Nawsad Siddique as expected. But the rest? All TMC. All Mamata.
Come to April 2026. Same constituency. Same voters. Same booths. The Assembly results tell a different story. The Jadavpur Assembly segment was won by Sarbori Mukherjee of the BJP, defeating the sitting TMC MLA. Sonarpur Dakshin fell to Roopa Ganguly of the BJP. Tollygunge went to BJP's Papiya Dey Adhikari, who defeated the sitting TMC minister Aroop Biswas. The one exception: Baruipur Paschim, where Assembly Speaker Biman Banerjee held on for TMC. Bhangar stayed with the ISF as it always does, because Bhangar is Bhangar.
So, the majority of the constituency that sent Saayoni Ghosh to Parliament in a wave, that same constituency, by the following year, had voted for the party she had spent her public career denouncing.
I will ask my question again, and this time I would like an honest answer: Who, exactly, switched sides?
In democracies, we have a lovely ritual. Every few years, the citizen exercises what we grandly call the franchise. They walk to the booth. They press the button. If they press a different button than last time, we celebrate it with the language of sovereignty. Voter anger. People's mandate. The ground has shifted. Bengal has spoken. How BJP will always be rejected by Bengal. We write long editorials about how politicians must listen to the public will, how the public is never wrong, how the public is the final word.
The public of Jadavpur spoke. Rather loudly. In April 2026, they exercised their sovereign right to disagree with everything they had voted for in 2024. And then, the very next morning, the question on every liberal lip was: why has Saayoni Ghosh no principles?
The people of Bengal sold their ideology for development. They auctioned their secularism for the promise of an administration not run by Abhishek Banerjee in the name of Mamata Banerjee. They traded their Maa Maati Manush slogan for what they believed to be a government that might actually build the roads, fill the jobs, and stop running on fear and retribution. They decided, after 15 years and several scams, that the price of principle had exceeded their budget.
These are not my words. These are their votes.
But the politicians are the shameless ones.
Think about the extraordinary standard we apply. The voter is celebrated for voting their conscience, even when their conscience changed direction overnight. The politician who reads that conscience and adjusts accordingly is accused of opportunism. The voter has no ideology? Fine. That is democracy. The politician has no ideology? Betrayal. Treason. Ungrateful wretch.
We are upset with Satabdi Roy for jumping ship. We are upset with Prasun Banerjee and Yusuf Pathan. We are upset with all 20 MPs who read the room and concluded, rationally, that the room had been repainted saffron by the very people who sent them there.
The voters who did this repainting are at home, entirely unbothered.
There is a reason the anti-defection law exists for politicians. It is because we believe elected representatives must honour the mandate of their party and their voters. Reasonable. The law prevents retail of representatives, so they move wholesale. En bloc. En masse.
But where is the anti-defection law for the voter? Where is the accountability for the person who voted TMC in 2021, waved the flag for Mamata in 2024, and handed the same constituency to the BJP in 2026? We have no such law. We have no such expectations. We do not even have such a question while the voter moves. En bloc. En masse.
The voter defects every five years. With pride. With ink on their finger and spring in their step.
Saayoni Ghosh defects once. In the gossip columns for a fortnight.
Democracy is for everyone except the people who win it and then lose it, is it? Saayoni Ghosh had one job. To represent the people of Jadavpur. The people of Jadavpur changed their mood. The question arises: will she truly reflect the mood of Jadavpur and represent its people in the Lok Sabha if she didn't change herself according to the will of the people? You may say she should resign and contest again on a different ticket. But is that necessary, when the people have spoken their mind so overwhelmingly? Spare the nation the cost of a midterm and let her conform to the will of the people.
The voters of Bengal exercised their sovereign right to change their minds. Splendid. The politicians who noticed this and drew the obvious, arithmetical, entirely logical conclusion are guilty of nothing more than reading the same electorate that every exit pollster, every psephologist, and every television anchor read before the election and got wrong, then re-read after the election and got humbled.
Why should a bunch of them, then, question the rebels who obeyed their people's renewed mandate? The original defectors are the people of Bengal. They just had a two-year head start. Cut Saayoni the slack. Don't blame her for Ghosh-ting Mamata Banerjee. Blame the fickle fingers of the people of Jadavpur.
(Kamlesh Singh, a columnist and satirist, is Tau of the popular Teen Taal podcast)
Now that the dust has more or less settled on the TMC rebellion, let us examine what happened in the wake of the 2026 West Bengal election and check whether everyone dumping on the rebels is justified. It's an emotional subject, so let us dissect the emotional atyachar of playing victim while victimising the poor Bengali rebels. You always said you loved Mamata because she was a rebel. Now you hate the word.
The TMC turncoats who once sang paeans to Mamata Banerjee with the fervour of Pannalal Bhattacharya delivering Shyama Sangeet, who called the BJP every name their Bangla vocabulary could accommodate, and who have now signed a letter to Speaker Om Birla quietly merging into something called the Nationalist Citizen Party of India. Nobody had heard of the NCPI a month ago. Now everyone has a strong opinion and a hilarious joke about it.
Those who are unhappy are forwarding the old videos. Here is Saayoni Ghosh, beloved Jadavpur MP, actress, youth-wing president, calling the BJP anti-Bengal, anti-democracy, anti-everything. Here she is in June 2026, among 20 MPs formally splitting from TMC and heading into the arms of a party that they did not know existed when the results were declared. The question being asked in television studios, in courtrooms of public opinion, in every WhatsApp group with a forward-loving uncle: how could they flip like this? Have they no shame? Have they no ideology? Have they no principles? No scruples, go ma go!
Let us pause. Let us ask a different question: what about the absolute lack of loyalty of the people of Jadavpur?
In May 2024, Saayoni Ghosh won the Lok Sabha constituency by 2,58,201 votes. She received 45.83% of the vote, with six of the seven assembly segments under Jadavpur giving her party the massive lead. The verdict was not a win, it was a coronation. In the 2021 Assembly elections, Bhangar, the ISF stronghold, voted for Nawsad Siddique as expected. But the rest? All TMC. All Mamata.
Come to April 2026. Same constituency. Same voters. Same booths. The Assembly results tell a different story. The Jadavpur Assembly segment was won by Sarbori Mukherjee of the BJP, defeating the sitting TMC MLA. Sonarpur Dakshin fell to Roopa Ganguly of the BJP. Tollygunge went to BJP's Papiya Dey Adhikari, who defeated the sitting TMC minister Aroop Biswas. The one exception: Baruipur Paschim, where Assembly Speaker Biman Banerjee held on for TMC. Bhangar stayed with the ISF as it always does, because Bhangar is Bhangar.
So, the majority of the constituency that sent Saayoni Ghosh to Parliament in a wave, that same constituency, by the following year, had voted for the party she had spent her public career denouncing.
I will ask my question again, and this time I would like an honest answer: Who, exactly, switched sides?
In democracies, we have a lovely ritual. Every few years, the citizen exercises what we grandly call the franchise. They walk to the booth. They press the button. If they press a different button than last time, we celebrate it with the language of sovereignty. Voter anger. People's mandate. The ground has shifted. Bengal has spoken. How BJP will always be rejected by Bengal. We write long editorials about how politicians must listen to the public will, how the public is never wrong, how the public is the final word.
The public of Jadavpur spoke. Rather loudly. In April 2026, they exercised their sovereign right to disagree with everything they had voted for in 2024. And then, the very next morning, the question on every liberal lip was: why has Saayoni Ghosh no principles?
The people of Bengal sold their ideology for development. They auctioned their secularism for the promise of an administration not run by Abhishek Banerjee in the name of Mamata Banerjee. They traded their Maa Maati Manush slogan for what they believed to be a government that might actually build the roads, fill the jobs, and stop running on fear and retribution. They decided, after 15 years and several scams, that the price of principle had exceeded their budget.
These are not my words. These are their votes.
But the politicians are the shameless ones.
Think about the extraordinary standard we apply. The voter is celebrated for voting their conscience, even when their conscience changed direction overnight. The politician who reads that conscience and adjusts accordingly is accused of opportunism. The voter has no ideology? Fine. That is democracy. The politician has no ideology? Betrayal. Treason. Ungrateful wretch.
We are upset with Satabdi Roy for jumping ship. We are upset with Prasun Banerjee and Yusuf Pathan. We are upset with all 20 MPs who read the room and concluded, rationally, that the room had been repainted saffron by the very people who sent them there.
The voters who did this repainting are at home, entirely unbothered.
There is a reason the anti-defection law exists for politicians. It is because we believe elected representatives must honour the mandate of their party and their voters. Reasonable. The law prevents retail of representatives, so they move wholesale. En bloc. En masse.
But where is the anti-defection law for the voter? Where is the accountability for the person who voted TMC in 2021, waved the flag for Mamata in 2024, and handed the same constituency to the BJP in 2026? We have no such law. We have no such expectations. We do not even have such a question while the voter moves. En bloc. En masse.
The voter defects every five years. With pride. With ink on their finger and spring in their step.
Saayoni Ghosh defects once. In the gossip columns for a fortnight.
Democracy is for everyone except the people who win it and then lose it, is it? Saayoni Ghosh had one job. To represent the people of Jadavpur. The people of Jadavpur changed their mood. The question arises: will she truly reflect the mood of Jadavpur and represent its people in the Lok Sabha if she didn't change herself according to the will of the people? You may say she should resign and contest again on a different ticket. But is that necessary, when the people have spoken their mind so overwhelmingly? Spare the nation the cost of a midterm and let her conform to the will of the people.
The voters of Bengal exercised their sovereign right to change their minds. Splendid. The politicians who noticed this and drew the obvious, arithmetical, entirely logical conclusion are guilty of nothing more than reading the same electorate that every exit pollster, every psephologist, and every television anchor read before the election and got wrong, then re-read after the election and got humbled.
Why should a bunch of them, then, question the rebels who obeyed their people's renewed mandate? The original defectors are the people of Bengal. They just had a two-year head start. Cut Saayoni the slack. Don't blame her for Ghosh-ting Mamata Banerjee. Blame the fickle fingers of the people of Jadavpur.
(Kamlesh Singh, a columnist and satirist, is Tau of the popular Teen Taal podcast)
