20 TMC rebels split in LS, merge with regional outfit

Splitting from the parent party on Sunday, 20 rebel All India Trinamool Congress members met Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla to demand recognition as a separate bloc and announced a merger with a Bengal-based regional outfit, the Nationalist Citizens Party. The faction said it would back Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA in the House.

The meeting between the rebels, including one-time TMC chief Mamata Banerjee's aide Sudip Bandopadhyay, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar and cricketer-politician Yusuf Pathan, came after Didi's aides — Kirti Azad and Sagarika Ghosh — submitted to Birla a letter contesting the rebels' claim.

The letter by TMC leader in the Lok Sabha Abhishek Banerjee, Mamata's nephew, cites the law to say that the TMC was a single, indivisible party and no member or set of members could on their own carve out a parallel group of the same party to claim independent recognition in the House.

The rebels, however, said they had decided to merge with the Nationalist Citizens Party to avoid legal complications that could arise from the creation of a separate bloc.

The rebels, who are two-thirds of the strength of the TMC legislature party in the Lok Sabha (28 MPs), also said they would stake a claim to the TMC symbol later and fight the matter in the court.

Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, after meeting Birla today, said, "We 20 MPs elected from the Trinamool Congress have met the Speaker and submitted a letter requesting to sit separately; these 20 MPs constitute more than two-thirds of the TMC's strength in the House. We are merging with the Nationalist Citizens Party. Moving forward, we will work for the nation and collaborate with the NDA under the leadership of PM Modi."

Another rebel Sudip Bandopadhyay said the separate faction would take a legal recourse later. "This is the system. When you leave with two-thirds of the party, you cannot seek the name of the party on the first day itself. In July, we will demand the Trinamool symbol on the basis of the two-third majority. That is when the courts will decide," said Bandopadhyay.

Importantly, while Bandopadhyay was recently replaced as leader of the TMC in the Lok Sabha by Abhishek Banerjee, Kakoli Ghosh was replaced as the TMC chief whip in the House by Kalyan Banerjee.

Meanwhile, senior Supreme Court lawyer Kapil Sibal, who is also an independent MP, termed the developments of the day "theatre of the absurd".

"TMC rebels: Will merge with the Nationalist Citizens Party. Indian democracy has become the 'theatre of the absurd'. A joke! The rebels of the TMC legislative party cannot merge with a political party; that can happen only if the TMC wished to do so! Disqualify them," he said.

Earlier today, Abhishek also said the same thing in his letter to Birla.

He said the TMC legislative party in the Lok Sabha derives its very existence from the political party. "There is in law only one TMC, one leader of the party in the Lok Sabha and one whip, all of whom hold office by authority of the party and its competent organisational authority," Abhishek's letter to the Speaker said.

If approved by Birla, the move would reduce the TMC strength in the LS to just eight MPs.

The NDA strength, currently 293, will go up to 313.

On account of three vacancies in the 543-member Lok Sabha, currently the two-thirds majority mark is 360.

The BJP-led NDA is actively seeking a two-thirds majority in the House to again pilot and pass the 131st Constitution Amendment Bill, which reserves 33 per cent seats for women by way of delimitation of constituencies.

On April 17, during a special session of Parliament, a united Opposition had defeated the delimitation move.

While 298 MPs had voted for the draft Bll that tied women's reservation to delimitation of constituencies, 230 had voted against it.