Amid the Trinamool Congress meltdown in the aftermath of the West Bengal Assembly election, its veteran leader, Sukhendu Sekhar Roy, has resigned from the party’s membership and also given up his Rajya Sabha seat.

Asked why he had resigned, Roy told The Indian Express, “Because of the situation that was prevailing in the party for a long time.” To a question on whether he will be joining another party, he said, “I have spent 59 years in politics. So I have to take a call at the appropriate time after introspection and retrospection.” He said he has “no idea” if any of his Rajya Sabha colleagues are resigning.

Roy’s decision comes at a time when party chief Mamata Banerjee and her nephew and Trinamool general secretary, Abhishek Banerjee, are in the national capital for a meeting of the INDIA opposition bloc. This morning, the two reached the Constitution Club for the meeting.

The Trinamool’s big defeat in the Bengal Assembly election, which saw the BJP come to power, has been followed by a meltdown, with a large chunk of the party’s MLAs defying Mamata Banerjee’s choice of Sovandeb Chattopadhyay as the Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly. The rebel MLAs, led by Ritabrata Banerjee, have said they want Ritabrata as their leader in the House. The rebel faction, however, has stressed that they want Mamata Banerjee to be their guide.

The rebellion in Bengal has sparked speculation that the Trinamool Congress’s parliamentary contingent, too, may see a rift. Earlier, senior MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar quit the party posts after citing corruption and said incidents such as the rape-murder of a doctor in Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College and Hospital last year led to dissatisfaction and mistrust among the people for the party, leading to its defeat in the Bengal election.

Sukhendu Sekhar Roy had earlier joined the protests over the RG Kar incident, saying he too has a daughter and a granddaughter. “Enough of cruelty against women. Let’s resist together, come what may,” he had said in a post on X shortly after the heinous crime.

Meanwhile, around 20 of Trinamool’s Lok Sabha MPs (out of 28) are holding a meeting at an undisclosed location in Delhi. According to sources, they are discussing two options: to send a letter to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, asking to be treated as a separate bloc and not under Abhishek Banerjee as parliamentary party leader; the second option they are discussing, sources said, is to go for mass resignation.