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 minority — seeking its view, they said.
Parliamentary insiders said Birla is likely to ask for a formal legal opinion about the defectors’ request to be treated as a distinct group after their proposed alignment 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, the sources said.
Officials indicated the Union law ministry’s written view — prepared after consulting a senior law officer — will be central to deciding whether the splinter receives formal recognition.
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 pointed to paragraph 4 of the 10th Schedule of the Constitution, stressing that only an entire political party can merge with another party, not individual 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 handled party registrations called the TMC rebels’ plan to merge with the NCPI an “innovation” absent from both the anti-defection law and the Representation of the People Act.
Tensions within the TMC deepened on Sunday after the defectors declared their merger with the NCPI and met Birla to request separate seating in the Lower House.
After the meeting, defected MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar said 20 MPs from her party had signed the representation sent 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 was registered with the Election Commission in January 2023, listing a Sankarail address in Howrah, West Bengal, and remains largely marginal on the national stage.
