Trinamool Congress leader Abhishek Banerjee on Friday submitted petitions to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla demanding that 20 rebel MPs be disqualified on the grounds of leaving the party.
He said that the 10th Schedule of the Constitution was clear that if a member voluntarily gives up the party’s membership, they are to be disqualified as MPs.
“If the members have been elected on a symbol and are claiming after two years that they are joining a new party, their membership should go immediately,” he told reporters after meeting Birla.
The TMC is facing rebellions and internal divisions since losing the Assembly elections in May.
TMC leader Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar on Sunday said that 20 of the party’s 28 Lok Sabha MPs will merge with the Tripura-based Nationalist Citizens Party and back the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance in the Lower House of Parliament.
The speaker had asked Abhishek Banerjee, the leader of the TMC legislature party in the Lok Sabha, to present his case against the Dastidar-led faction’s decision.
On Friday, Abhishek Banerjee, citing the 10th Schedule, said that the merger can be considered valid only if two-thirds of a political party, not the legislature party, merges into another party.
“If they [rebels] have any integrity, they should resign [as MPs],” he stated. “...Let elections happen…Let the voters decide.”
The rebel MPs had disobeyed the Constitution, Abhishek Banerjee said, adding that he had filed 20 separate disqualification petitions in the matter.
Abhishek Banerjee said that he had also cited to the speaker a Supreme Court judgement ordering an Assembly speaker to decide on disqualification pleas within three months.
Last week, three of the TMC’s Rajya Sabha MPs had also resigned, and two of them quit the party.
At the state level, a group of 58 of TMC’s 80 legislators has been recognised by the Assembly speaker as the party’s legislature wing in the House. The stand taken by the group led by expelled TMC MLA Ritabrata Banerjee is being viewed as a challenge to party chief Mamata Banerjee, who is supporting another legislator as the leader of the Opposition in the Assembly.
On Thursday, the Calcutta High Court declined to grant interim relief in a petition challenging the speaker’s decision to recognise Ritabrata Banerjee as the leader of the Opposition.
Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.
Also read:
- Why the Trinamool Congress is collapsing like a house of cards
- One nation, one party: Is the anti-defection law dead?
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