Abhishek Banerjee has been made Trinamul Congress national general secretary again but several checks and balances have been put in place, suggesting his perch as Number Two might no longer be head and shoulders above the rest.

The decisions were announced by Mamata Banerjee in a 25-minute address at the closed-door inaugural meeting of her party’s national working committee on Friday, six days after all national posts barring her own were abolished.

The outcome makes it fairly clear that she is not in a mood to allow her heir apparent to wield the kind of unquestioned clout he used to till last week.

Mamata handed out several key posts to senior leaders — deemed part of Trinamul’s old guard that Abhishek, the Diamond Harbour MP and her nephew, is not particularly fond of.

“She emphasised on unity and how ‘old is always gold’. It was clear that a wing-clipping exercise was underway, with the old guard being brought forward as a buffer from the challenges of the new,” said a source.

“She did give AB (Abhishek) his post back, yes. But with the other developments factored in, it stands substantially reduced in stature,” he added.

“There is no doubt left anywhere, anymore, that hers is the final word in the party.”

Among many decisions announced later in the evening by national working committee member Partha Chatterjee, the most significant was the elevation of senior minister and Calcutta mayor Firhad Hakim as coordinator between the committee and Mamata. Senior minister Aroop Biswas was made treasurer of Trinamul in a significant move to regain control of the party’s coffers.

“With the decisions announced today, especially that regarding Bobby (Hakim), she ensured further consolidation of power for Harish Chatterjee Street (where her residence is located) away from Camac Street (Abhishek’s office address),” the source said.

“Moreover, a WhatsApp group of the national working committee, which Bobby will handle, has made the decision-making at the topmost tier a collective exercise and far more transparent than it has been for some time,” the source added.

The meeting came in the wake of an internal crisis amid suggestions that ties between the nephew and aunt had turned testy. There have been some one-on-one interactions between the two since then, including one before the committee meeting on Friday evening, in what could be signs of a rapprochement.

But sources said a complete return to the order that existed till Saturday — with Abhishek, along with poll consultant Prashant Kishor, running almost a parallel chain of command — is unlikely in the foreseeable future.

Mamata picked Subrata Bakshi, Yashwant Sinha and Chandrima Bhattacharya as national vice-presidents of the party. While Rajya Sabha member Bakshi and former Union finance minister Sinha have occupied the post in the past, junior minister Bhattacharya is a new pick.

Mamata appointed Rajya Sabha member Sukhendu Sekhar Roy as national spokesperson, assigning him — along with Barasat MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar and Krishnagar MP Mahua Moitra — the task of keeping the party’s Delhi office active.

She entrusted Sinha and former state finance minister Amit Mitra (now the special adviser to the chief minister on finance) with the responsibility of forming the party’s policies on the economy and external affairs.

Sushmita Dev, Subal Bhowmik and Mukul Sangma will be in charge of the Northeast. Ashok Tanwar was placed in charge of Haryana and Rajesh Pati Tripathi was given charge of Uttar Pradesh.

“The Bengal leaders handed key responsibilities so far are all part of the old guard, the influence of which the AB-PK clique had been trying to erode,” said a Rajya Sabha member, adding that the people Mamata picked to head the civic corporations in Bidhannagar, Asansol and Chandernagore were no exceptions.

“Her backing for such people is also, yet again, a dismissal of the ‘one person, one post’ policy backed aggressively by the duo,” he added.

The MP flagged other aspects of Mamata’s address, suggesting they were subtle messages to the younger lot.

“She said more than once that the focus should not be on publicity for individuals, on social or mainstream media. It has to be collective, with focus on none but the party…. This was a clear message to AB,” he said, adding that Mamata had not taken kindly to Team Kishor’s relentless campaign to project Abhishek as a “messiah-like figure”.

“She also underscored how ours is a party of the poor, by the poor and for the poor, sternly advising against everything that’s ostentatious,” he added.

Political scientists said the most significant outcome of the meeting was the post created for Hakim.

“Firhad Hakim’s new post is the product of the present crisis within Trinamul and an initiative to avoid recurrence in the immediate future. One of her most trusted lieutenants, he will be her eyes and ears. Aroop, too, along with him,” said psephologist Biswanath Chakraborty, professor at Rabindra Bharati University.

“Also, the distance between the aunt and the nephew has, at least for now, been reduced significantly… that’s something she tried to make clear,” he added. “But the ‘one person, one post’ policy stands binned.”

“In a battle between conflict and balance, balance has won for now. A stable equilibrium has been achieved for the time being,” said political scientist Subhamoy Maitra, professor at the Indian Statistical Institute.

“We might see something like this in future again. But this one would not have done much by way of damage to Trinamul, which is in its pinkest of political health since its formation,” he added.