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Panja stripped of party posts

"Panja has been removed from all the posts of the Trinamul Congress since his activities have been harming the interests of Trinamul," party spokesman Sudip Bandopadhyay told newsmen in Calcutta.

The decision was taken at the party's committee meeting held at the residence of TC chief Mamata Banerjee. Panja did not attend the meeting.

Panja, however, will remain as an ordinary member, Bandopadhyay said.

Besides Mamata, the meeting was attended by TC parliamentarians Krishna Bose, Sudip Bandopadhyay, Ranjit Panja (Ajit Panja's brother), Akbar Ali Khondkar, Ananda Mohan Biswas and Bikram Sarkar. Nitish Sengupta, another parliamentarian, could not attend owing to his wife's illness.

Panja, who was invited to attend the meeting, expressed inability to take part citing several reasons including continued "arbitrary and whimsical" functioning of Banerjee.

Describing the decision as non est (not existing), Panja said that nowhere in the agenda of the meeting was there any mention of his removal from his posts. "This type of decision cannot be taken at the working committee meeting, but at a general body meet as per the party's constitution. I remain the chairman of the Trinamul West Bengal unit as well as a member of its working committee.''

Taking a dig at Bandopadhyay, Panja asked, "Who is Sudip Bandhopadhyay? After the election results were declared he went into hiding. Now he has resurfaced to serve this notice on me."

Though Panja asserted that the TC continued to remain part of the NDA, Bandhopadhyay, the party chief whip in the Lok Sabha, said that the TC had already informed its decision to withdraw from the NDA to Prime Minister A B Vajpayee, who is also leader of the House, on March 15.

"If necessary we will also write to the Lok Sabha Speaker, in this regard," he said.

Earlier, in a letter to party All India General Secretary Dinesh Trivedi, the dissident leader expressed inability to attend the working committee meeting, but again attacked Mamata Banerjee for her 'whimsical and arbitrary' way of functioning.

Panja also demanded that the party should immediately disassociate from the Congress, while insisting that the Trinamul continued to be part of the NDA.

State party president Subrata Bakshi, Subrata Mukherjee (city mayor), Sobhandev Chattopadhyay and TC legislature party leader Pankaj Banerjee were present at the meeting.

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