Days after senior leader and MP Sukhendu Sekhar Roy resigned from both the Trinamool Congress and the Rajya Sabha, another prominent leader, Sushmita Dev, on Wednesday quit the party and also stepped down from the Upper House.Party firebrand leader Saayoni Ghosh, who pitched TMC chief Mamata Banerjee as the PM face, is likely to exit too. Former Silchar MP Sushmita, who joined the TMC after quitting the Congress in August 2021, in her resignation addressed to Rajya Sabha Chairman CP Radhakrishnan, said she was resigning with immediate effect — the resignation was accepted.Speaking to reporters, Sushmita cited “political and personal reasons” for resigning. “In the morning today, I resigned from the Trinamool, and since the Rajya Sabha seat was given by the party, I resigned from the seat also. The reason for my resignation is both personal and political. Today, I am a free woman,” Sushmita said. She, however, declined to elaborate further, refusing to comment on her future plans or the party she might join.About leaders abandoning the TMC, she said, “I am not privy to who is doing what. I am not directly involved in Bengal politics. I am from Assam. I have known Himanta da (Assam Chief Minister) for a long time so I paid him a courtesy visit.”Adding to the party’s troubles, another TMC leader Satabdi Roy expressed support for the rebel faction led by Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar. She said that those leaving the party were not doing so because of electoral defeats but due to a series of wrong decisions taken by the leadership.Satabdi Roy also questioned the functioning of the party, alleging that party supremo Mamata Banerjee had failed to grasp the realities unfolding around her. She claimed that Banerjee was “suffering from a mental blockage” and accused her of ignoring growing public dissatisfaction with her nephew Abhishek Banerjee”. According to Roy, Mamata failed to make Abhishek understand the need to change his lifestyle, describing it as a “big mistake”.“If only two MPs had left, I would have considered it their individual problem,” Satabdi Roy said. “But when 20 MPs leave, it indicates deeper issues within the party — problems faced by many leaders that the party leadership neither recognised nor addressed.”Pathan, Shatrughan among LS rebels?Rebel TMC sources gave the names of 19 MPs who have decided to break away from TMC and form a separate bloc backing the NDA in the Lok Sabha — Yusuf Pathan, Shatrughan Sinha, Kakoli Ghosh, Saayoni Ghosh, Khalil-ur-Rahman, JC Barma, Bapi Haldar, June Malia, Mala Roy, Partha Bhowmik, Kalipada Soren, Sharmila Sarkar, Asit Mal, Rachna Banerjee, Satabdi Roy, Aroop Chakraborty, Mitali Bag, Abu Tahir, Dev Adhikari. The Lok Sabha Speaker’s office denied knowledge of 19 TMC MPs writing to it.