Ties between Mamata Banerjee's TMC and I-PAC intact: Source

"No, absolutely not. There are a lot of rumours going on. I-PAC is still working with the TMC," a source in I-PAC told IBNS when he was asked whether TMC no longer subscribes to the organisation.

Mamata, who according to several reports is having a rift with her nephew and TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, will hold a top level meeting on Saturday.

The controversy first started after a dual list of candidates were released for the Feb 12 civic polls, feeding the speculations over a rift between Mamata and Abhishek.

In the last few days, the supposed infighting within the party reached the peak with senior TMC MLA Madan Mitra telling a news channel that the I-PAC will no longer work for the outfit.

Prashant Kishor

Senior leaders Partha Chatterjee and Subrata Bakshi will take decisions, said Mitra, who has been denied any ministerial berth by Mamata after her emphatic win in the 2021 assembly elections.

Mitra accused the present I-PAC team of interfering in every sphere of the election process unlike its former boss Prashant Kishor, who worked with the TMC for the 2021 polls.

In an explosive claim, West Bengal Minister Chandrima Bhattacharya accused I-PAC of posting on her social media without her knowledge.

Rejecting the claim, I-PAC has put up a tweet which reads, "I-PAC doesn't handle any digital properties of @AITCofficial
or any of its leaders. Anyone making such claim is either uninformed or is blatantly lying.

"AITC should look into if and how their digital properties and/or that of their leaders are being “allegedly (mis)used”."

Following the massive turnaround in 2021 after suffering a setback in the 2019 General Elections, Mamata had signed a five-year contract with the I-PAC.

Though Kishor has left the job of a political strategist after the 2021 West Bengal elections, he still works closely with the TMC despite having political ambitions for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.