All India Mahila Congress president and former MP from Silchar Sushmita Dev resigned from the Congress Sunday, saying she was “beginning a replacement chapter of public service”. Sources on the brink of Dev have told The Indian Express that she is probably going to hitch Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress. Calls to Dev went unanswered.

The resignation of Dev — who is that the daughter of seven-time parliamentarian Santosh Mohan Dev and thought of the face of the Congress in Assam’s largely Bengali-speaking Barak Valley — comes as an enormous blow to the Congress. within the recently-concluded Assam Assembly elections in May, the Congress— which had partnered with Badruddin Ajmal’s All India United Democratic Front (AIDUF) — was defeated by the NDA alliance. Since then, a minimum of two prominent Congress legislators (Rupjyoti Kurmi and Sushanta Borgohain) have jumped ship to the BJP.

In a letter to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, Dev didn’t mention why she was resigning but said that she cherished her “three-decade-long association” with the party. “May I take this chance to thank the party, all its leaders, members, and workers who are a neighborhood of my memorable journey,” Dev wrote within the letter, expressing gratitude to Sonia Gandhi for her “guidance.” She also changed her Twitter bio to a “former member of the party” and “former chief of the Mahila Congress” late last night.

Following Dev’s resignation, senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal tweeted: “Sushmita Dev Resigns from primary membership of our Party. While young leaders leave we ‘oldies’ are blamed for our efforts to strengthen it The Party moves on with: Eyes Wide Shut.”

Congress leader of the Opposition in Assam, Debabrata Saikia confirmed to The Indian Express that Dev had sent a letter to Sonia Gandhi on Friday night. On Saturday afternoon, the Congress supreme headquarters — including Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi — had a gathering with the delegations of the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee in Delhi. “She was considerably a neighborhood of the meeting…we weren’t aware she was getting to quit,” said Saikia.

However, rumours of Dev’s quitting surfaced in February, when she is claimed to possess walked out of a celebration meeting in Guwahati unhappy over selection of candidates and seat-sharing with AIUDF within the three Barak Valley districts in south Assam. Later in an interview, she told The Indian Express that she “never wanted to resign” but was “hurt”. “If you’ve got to compromise your karmabhoomi, where you’re employed , your soil… if you’ve got to compromise and provides it to others, it’ll hurt you. So it hurt me. But I always bow to the supreme headquarters , and that i did this point too. If i’m not getting to fight for my territory, who will?” she had said.

“When we had a one-on-one conversation before the elections, she was mentioning that she didn’t prefer the Congress alliance with AIUDF. However, she worked for the party after that…I don’t know what happened recently but the old reason was that she was against the AIUDF alliance,” Saikia said.

Sources said that she was “disgruntled” with the party because she felt that her “political space was continuously being shrunk.” “Her Lok Sabha seat (Silchar) has about seven assembly segments…half of them got away to the AIUDF within the Assembly elections. She felt that it might decimate the Congress in Barak Valley, and hurt her chances in 2024 elections also ,” a source on the brink of her said.

“She felt she wasn’t taken seriously and neither was she consulted for key decisions.Even when it came to the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), her position as a Bengali Hindu (the community largely supports the CAA in Assam) came in conflict together with her party’s official stand on the Act,” the source said.

Saikia said that he heard that Dev was in talks with the TMC. The source added that she may “play a “national” role within the TMC — especially with the TMC trying to form ‘serious’ inroads into Tripura.”

Dev’s father, Santosh Mohan Dev remains an enormous name in Tripura, and in his seven terms as an MP, he had represented Silchar from Assam five times and Tripura twice.