NEW DELHI: Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Abhishek Banerjee on Friday met Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla to submit disqualification petitions against party MPs who have sought to merge with the lesser-known Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI).
Banerjee, the nephew of former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, said he submitted around 20 petitions containing relevant judgments and media reports. "I can only present my side before him, and I have done that," he told news agency PTI after the meeting. "I submitted the disqualification petitions that I showed you. Around 20 such petitions have been submitted. All our prayers are included in these petitions, and all relevant judgments have been cited. Each petition is 21 pages long. We have also attached all the media reports that came to our notice and submitted them along with the petitions."
Expressing hope that Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla would "act in accordance with the Constitution," Banerjee said: "The Lok Sabha Speaker is the custodian of the House, not the protector of the government of the day. Every citizen, especially elected representatives, must work within the ambit of the law. Therefore, one has to function according to the provisions laid down in the Constitution."
Rebel MPs Merge with NCPI
In a dramatic development, 20 rebel Trinamool Congress MPs informed Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla that their group has merged with NCPI, a party registered in West Bengal’s Howrah that contested a few seats in the 2023 Tripura assembly elections. They announced they will back the BJP-led NDA.
Incidentally, “to save your rights, reject political turncoats” was one of the slogans of NCPI. The merger makes the little-known party the second-biggest bloc (20 Lok Sabha members) in the governing alliance, after BJP (240), and ahead of TDP (16) and JDU (12). The rebels asked Birla to allot them seats with the treasury benches, as they were seated with opposition parties in Parliament till now as members of TMC.
Sudip Bandyopadhyay, a sixth-term MP and the most experienced member of the breakaway bloc, also left open the possibility of going to the Election Commission to stake claim as “real TMC.”
Anti-Defection Law Cited
After the meeting with Speaker Om Birla, Sudip Bandyopadhyay said the merger was guided by demands of the anti-defection law (Tenth Schedule of the Constitution). The law does not recognize a split, a point stressed by the Supreme Court in its 2022 judgment in the Shiv Sena case, but makes an exception for the merger of two-thirds of members of one party with another party. With 20 MPs, the TMC dissidents have one MP more than the required two-thirds figure, as TMC has 28 members in Lok Sabha.
NCPI is a registered unrecognized party with the Election Commission, one of 2,049 that have not crossed the threshold of poll performance needed to get recognized.
The rebel MPs earlier met at the residence of Union Minister Bhupender Yadav and were joined by BJP MP Nishikant Dubey, who played a crucial role in breaking TMC. Sources said 19 MPs were physically present while one member has pledged her support, indicating that more TMC Rajya Sabha members may resign in the coming days. Three have quit so far.
