Bengal LoP Suvendu Adhikari brings out list of 50 Trinamool youth leaders ‘controlling’ college campuses

Leader of Opposition in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislator Suvendu Adhikari on Tuesday (July 8, 2025) presented a list of 50 Trinamool student leaders, accusing them of exerting unchecked power in various educational institutions across the State.

 “This has just 50 names, but I can give 950 more,” Mr. Adhikari said while presenting what he called a “gallery of lumpens”. 

In the slideshow, the alleged Trinamool student leaders were mostly shown to be ex-students, office bearers of the Trinamool Congress Chatra Parishad (TMCP) and current employees of the same institution in posts ranging from non-teaching staff to assistant professor. 

He accused them of being “notorious criminals” and of turning college union rooms into centres of debauchery where women would allegedly be harassed and substances would be consumed.

 “They all received these job appointments in completely illegal ways. Worthy candidates had no opportunity to bag these posts. They were first given casual job appointments, which were later regularised by the Governing Bodies of the institution,” Mr Adhikari alleged. 

He further alleged that Governing Bodies of most higher education institutions are being headed by Trinamool Congress supporters. He further added that the student leaders would also enjoy access to the top leadership of the Trinamool. 

“The college Governing Bodies have a free rein in the appointment of non-teaching staff. Trinamool cadre en masse have been hired through them. On the other hand, the few professors you see on the list were fraudulently appointed through the College Service Commission by Partha Chattopadhyay,” the BJP MLA said. 

Mr Chattopadhyay, who is the former State Education Minister, is currently behind bars in connection to the alleged school jobs recruitment scam. 

“A section of college principals doesn’t speak up against this out of fear. Another section of unqualified college principals who were appointed undeservedly do not want to displease the ruling dispensation. They saw what happened to those who had displeased them,” Mr Adhikari added. 

Trinamool Congress spokesperson Kunal Ghosh refuted these claims alleging that during the regime of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), all college campuses were under the Left’s local committees and local police station. 

“In BJP States, BJP controls college campuses…All student leaders cannot be bad. When Suvendu was in the Trinamool Congress and Trinamool student leaders in his neighbourhood sloganeered in his favour, then he did not mind?” Mr Ghosh asked. 

Questions were raised about threat culture, corruption, and unchecked misuse of power by leaders of Trinamool’s student wing across various colleges in the State when the prime accused in the Kolkata law college rape case, Monojit Mishra, was described by the survivor as a the “unofficial head” of the party’s college unit. 

Mishra, alias “MangoDa”, had been appointed as a temporary non-teaching staff of the South Calcutta Law College months before he was accused of raping a student in the guard room. 

While Trinamool Congress leaders disassociated the party from Mishra following rape allegations, in earlier conversations with The Hindu, current students of the college described him as a “threatening personality who could not be challenged without dire consequences.”

In related developments, a video surfaced online allegedly capturing Trinamool youth leader Pratik Kumar De in the union room of Sonarpur Mahavidyalaya getting a head massage from a female student of the college. 

 Additionally, on Tuesday (July 8, 2025), residents of Ballygunge staged a demonstration against Trinamool student leader Sanjay Choudhury, accusing him of fostering an environment of debauchery in the Industrial Training Institute in Ballygunge, despite graduating over a decade ago.