Speaker to seek views of both TMC factions before decision; mail sent to Mamata group: Sources

Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla will hear both the defected Trinamool Congress MPs and the faction led by Mamata Banerjee before deciding on recognition of the breakaway group, which plans to merge with the Nationalist Citizens Party of India

New Delhi: Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla will hear the defected TMC MPs as well as the faction led by Mamata Banerjee before deciding on giving recognition to the breakaway faction, sources have said.

The speaker’s office has also sent an email to the Banerjee-led faction – which is now reduced to a rump – seeking its view, they said.

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Earlier, sources from Parliament said Birla is likely to seek legal opinion on the defected leaders’ demand to be recognised as a separate group after a proposed merger with the little-known Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI).

Any decision on the group’s demand will be taken before the Monsoon Session of Parliament, which usually commences in the third week of July, they said.

A decision on whether the breakaway faction gets the recognition will be based on the written opinion of the Union law ministry, which will give it after consulting a senior law officer.

The legal opinion will be sought so that the speaker’s decision, if challenged in court, can withstand judicial scrutiny, sources said.

Former secretary general of the Lok Sabha and constitutional expert PDT Achary cited paragraph 4 of the 10th Schedule of the Constitution to underline that only a political party can merge with another political party, not MPs or MLAs.

He told PTI that if the leadership of a political party decides to merge with another political party, its MLAs and MPs have to agree on the merger “but MPs or the MLAs alone cannot merge with another political party… this is the Constitutional provision.”

A former Election Commission officer, who dealt with political parties in the poll authority, described the current plan of the TMC rebels to merge with the NCPI as an “innovation” that has no mention in either the anti-defection law or the Representation of the People Act.

The crisis in the TMC deepened on Sunday as the defected MPs announced their merger with the NCPI and met Birla seeking a separate seating arrangement in the Lower House.

After the meeting, defected MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar said 20 party MPs had signed the representation submitted to the speaker.

“Two-thirds of TMC MPs have given a letter to the speaker for a separate seating arrangement. We will merge with the Nationalist Citizens Party and support the NDA,” she said.

The NCPI registered itself as a political party in January 2023, with a building in Sankarail in West Bengal’s Howrah district as its address in the ECI records and has little footprint in national politics.