Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday agreed with Congress veteran Pradip Bhattacharya, who had said on Saturday that the organisation was still doing “penance” for expelling her and he couldn’t see a way out of the “chasm” for the party in Bengal.

"Thik bolechheyn (Rightly said)!" said the chief minister in response to journalists' question on Bhattacharya's comments. Mamata, while walking away after a brief interaction with journalists following her return from Gangasagar, was asked to respond to what former MP Bhattacharya had said.

At an event here on Saturday, Bhattacharya, 79, former Bengal Congress chief, seemed to lament the loss to the party from the expulsion of Mamata on December 21, 1997, which had prompted her to form Trinamool on January 1, 1998.

Bhattacharya claimed he had warned the then state Congress president, Somen Mitra, against the move, but the latter was forced to obey the then national party president Sitaram Kesri’s order.

“Why was the Congress party fragmented (in Bengal)? I vividly remember, the day now chief minister Mamata Banerjee was expelled from the party… I received a call from Somen. He said Sitaram Kesri called to say Mamata must be expelled.

“You must do it, because we have done it,” Kesri had said. I had told Somen, “whatever you do, don’t do this”,” said Bhattacharya, whose relative softness towards Mamata is no secret. He had secured his second term at the Rajya Sabha, from 2017, with her publicly declared support, after the Congress’s Bengal ally, the CPM, had shown inexplicable reluctance.

The TMC rose meteorically to snatch the principal Opposition space from the Congress immediately.