Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla to meet Abhishek Banerjee on TMC party split

Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla Wednesday invited TMC general secretary Abhishek Banerjee for a meeting on June 19 to present his case on the split in the Mamata Banerjee-led party. Sources in TMC said the party has received an email from the Speaker’s office and Abhishek will be travelling to Delhi to meet Birla at Parliament House at 5 pm on Friday. The development comes amid a demand by 20 rebel TMC MPs to recognise them as a separate group after their merger with Nationalist Citizens Party of India. Birla has decided to hear both factions before taking a decision. Birla’s office had sent an email to Abhishek, who is TMC’s leader in LS, around 2pm on Monday, and asked him to meet the Speaker at 4pm. However, at that time, Abhishek was being questioned by CID in Kolkata in criminal cases lodged against him. It is in this backdrop that the Speaker’s office has given him time on Friday. On June 10, Abhishek wrote to Birla urging him not to accord any recognition to any purported separate faction, arguing that the Constitution does not permit the formation of a separate group within an existing political party.