Rebel Trinamool Congress MPs Merge with NCPI, Pledge Support to NDA

Rebel camp to merge with NCPI, extends support to NDA

NEW DELHI: Chances of even a politically clued-in person having heard of Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI) are near-zero. It is now set to be the fifth biggest party in Lok Sabha. In a dramatic development, 20 rebel Trinamool Congress MPs informed Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla that their group has merged with NCPI — which is registered in West Bengal’s Howrah and had contested a few seats in the 2023 Tripura assembly elections — and that they will be backing the BJP-led NDA. Incidentally, “to save your rights, reject political turncoats” was one of the slogans of NCPI. The merger will make the little-known party the second-biggest bloc (20 LS members) in the governing alliance, after BJP (240), and ahead of TDP (16) and JDU (12). The rebels asked Birla to allot them seats with the treasury benches, as they were seated with opposition parties in Parliament till now as members of TMC. Sudip Bandyopadhyay, who as a sixth-term MP is the most experienced member of the breakaway bloc, also left open the possibility of going to Election Commission to stake claim as “real TMC”.

TMC rebels have 1 MP more than required 2/3rd

After the meeting with Speaker Om Birla, Sudip Bandyopadhyay said the merger was guided by demands of the anti-defection law (Tenth Schedule of Constitution). The law does not recognise a split — a point stressed by Supreme Court in its 2022 judgment in the case of division in Shiv Sena as well — but makes an exception for merger of two-thirds of members of one party with another party. With 20 MPs, the TMC dissidents have one MP more than the required two-thirds figure as TMC has 28 members in LS. NCPI is a registered unrecognised party with EC, one of 2,049 that have not been able to cross the threshold of poll performance needed to get recognised. The rebel MPs earlier met at the residence of Union minister Bhupender Yadav and were joined by BJP MP Nishikant Dubey, who played a crucial role in breaking TMC. Sources said 19 MPs were physically present while one member has pledged her support, indicating that more TMC Rajya Sabha members may resign in the coming days. Three have quit so far. TMC MPs Kirti Azad and Sagarika Ghose rushed to Birla’s residence and submitted their LS leader Abhishek Banerjee’s letter that urged Birla to not recognise any separate group or faction of the party headed by Mamata. Once the merger is recognised by Birla, NCPI will have 20 MPs, the fifth-largest contingent after BJP, Congress (98), SP (37) and DMK (22). NCPI’s support will take NDA’s tally to 313 as part of what is being seen as BJP’s all-out efforts to attain the two-thirds mark of 361 in LS, after its lack of super majority led to the fall of its bill to amend the women’s reservation law and push delimitation to raise maximum seats in the house from 543 to 850. There has been growing buzz of defection in more opposition parties that prompted Sena UBT to call a meeting of its MPs Sunday. DMK’s exit from INDIA bloc has also come as a boost to NDA even though it is yet to indicate a rethink over its opposition to the changes in the women’s quota bill.