New Delhi, Jun 15 (PTI) Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla is likely to seek legal opinion on the TMC rebel group’s demand to be recognised as a separate group after its planned merger with the Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI), parliamentary sources said on Monday.
Any decision on the Trinamool Congress (TMC) rebel group’s demand will be taken before the Monsoon session of Parliament, which usually commences in the third week of July, they said.
The decision on the demand of the TMC rebels will be based on the written opinion of the Union law ministry, which will give it after consulting a senior law officer.
Legal opinion in writing will be sought so that the Speaker’s final decision if challenged in court can withstand judicial scrutiny, sources said.
Meanwhile, 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 is allowed to merge with another political party and just MPs or MLAs cannot merge.
He told PTI that if 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 NCPL 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 dissident MPs announced their merger with the little-known NCPI and met the Lok Sabha Speaker seeking a separate seating arrangement in the House.
Speaking to reporters after their meeting with Birla, rebel MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar said 20 TMC MPs had signed a 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.
The little-known outfit has now unexpectedly entered the national political conversation after the group of 20 dissident TMC Lok Sabha MPs announced their merger with the party on Sunday. PTI ACB NAB SAP ACB SAP SAP
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