New Delhi: Days of speculation on the fate of the Trinamool Congress ended Sunday as the rebel Members of Parliament (MPs) announced their merger with the little-known Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI), a West Bengal-based political outfit registered in 2023 that fielded candidates in the Tripura Assembly elections of the same year.
The NCPI is listed as a Registered Unrecognised Political Party (RUPP)—meaning it is either newly registered or has not secured enough votes or seats in elections to gain recognition as a national or state party. A party that has never contested an election may also be categorised as a RUPP.
A lawyer, Shewly Kundu, was named as the president of the party at the time of its registration. However, she told ANI on Monday that she resigned from the post a few days ago, so it is unclear who is currently heading the party.
The NCPI officially fielded at least two candidates in the Tripura Assembly elections of 2023, both of whom managed to collectively poll less than a 1,000 votes. They fought with a ‘pen nib with seven rays’ symbol. The people behind the party also seem to be serial organisation establishers, with a law firm, a Bengali newspaper, and a Non-Governmental Organisation also under their names.
Uttiya Kundu, listed as the vice-president of the party on posters for the 2023 Tripura Assembly elections, shared a picture on his Facebook page on 13 May with West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari. The caption, in Bengali, read: “The days of merely dreaming are over; now is the time to turn those dreams into reality. May Shri Suvendu Adhikari’s journey to victory as the Chief Minister of Bengal be auspicious. May every speck of dust in Bengal be revitalised by your resolve.”
On 10 June, four days before the merger, Uttiya shared a cryptic post on Facebook with pictures of Trinamool leaders Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek Banerjee picture, with the lines: “Pride is the cause of downfall. When in the grip of power, people often forget that power is not permanent, and that the support of the people is the real strength… Those who are at the top today will have to answer to time tomorrow”.
This obscure party is now apparently set to have 20 MPs in the Lok Sabha, with rebel TMC MPs having met Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla to convey the merger decision.
After the meeting, rebel TMC MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar told reporters, “We, the 20 MPs elected from the All India Trinamool Congress, met the Speaker and submitted a letter requesting separate seating; these 20 MPs constitute more than two-thirds of our total strength [in the House]. We are merging with the Nationalist Citizens Party. Moving forward, we will work for the nation and collaborate with the National Democratic Alliance under the leadership of the Prime Minister.”
The MPs present at the meeting with Birla included Dastidar, Sudip Bandyopadhyay, Satabdi Roy, Yusuf Pathan, Saayoni Ghosh, June Malia, and Jagdish Basunia.
Meanwhile, TMC National General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee has urged Birla to refuse to recognise any recognition, status, or facility to any TMC faction, asserting that the Trinamool Congress is a “single, indivisible political party”. The letter was handed over to the Speaker by TMC MPs Sagarika Ghose and Kirti Azad. The letter cited the law and relevant judgments, requesting the Speaker to give the party an opportunity to be heard before making a decision.
The rebel MPs seek to take refuge under the exception under the anti-defection law to escape disqualification, since they claim the support of 20 out of the 28 TMC Lok Sabha members. The anti-defection law allows legislators to avoid disqualification if their party merges with another party, and not less than two-thirds of them agree to the merger and walking out from the original party.
Senior TMC MP Sougata Roy called the merger “ridiculous” and alleged that this was being done only because parliamentary rules do not permit the recognition of a separate bloc within an existing party. He told reporters that the rebels have taken this route “with direct support from the BJP”.
Also Read: Why TMC MPs may still face disqualification even if 20 or two-thirds form a bloc
Election footprint
The story of the NCPI begins some time in 2022, months before the 2023 Tripura elections.
In order to register itself as a political party, the NCPI got public notices published on 13 October 2022, in the Millennium Post and Samagya, a Hindi newspaper in Kolkata. As per these notices, the office for the party is located at Jago Biswa, Holding No. 4719, village Hatgacha, Howrah district.
Shewly Kundu is named as the president or chairman of the party, while Saikat Das is named as the general secretary or secretary of the party and Sudam Jetty has been named as its treasurer. As per the annual audit statements and contribution reports submitted by the party to the Election Commission of India for the financial year 2022-23, the NCPI had a total income of Rs 1.13 lakh, total expenditure of Rs 1.135 lakh and total donations of Rs 1.13 lakh as well.
As per the report published by the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) on the Tripura Assembly Elections of 2023, 62-year-old Barjeda Tripura fought in the reserved Chawamanu constituency, and had assets worth Rs 4,90,000.
Barjeda Tripura polled 536 votes in the polls, just above the 500 votes polled for NOTA. The constituency was won by the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Sambhu Lal Chakma who got 16,644 votes.
Jahangir Ali, who contested the Kailashahar Assembly constituency, had total assets of Rs 4 lakh. The 51-year-old polled 286 votes, less than the 537 votes polled for NOTA. Congress candidate Birajit Sinha won the elections with 25,300 votes.
While NCPI had also advertised a third candidate Krishna Kumar Debbarma for the Amabassa constituency, Debbarma fought as an independent and polled 376 votes.
‘Pride is the cause of downfall’
Jago Biswa, which is listed as NCPI’s registered address, is a Bengali newspaper registered in 2013, with Uttiya Kundu as its owner, publisher and editor. A poster of the party from the 2023 polls also lists Uttiya as the vice-president of the party.
Shewly Kundu’s Facebook recognises her as the secretary of Jago Biswa, and as a partner of a law firm ‘No Problem Law Point’. The law firm’s Facebook post from 2020 lists Uttiya as its Auditor.
As per Uttiya Kundu’s Facebook page, he is the editor of Jago Biswa, a ‘famous mathematician’, a social worker, the chairman of the All India Anti-Corruption Forum, and a motivational speaker among other things.
Uttiya was also a director at an NGO, Paschim Banga Asangathita Mahila Karmi Association, till 2022, after which Shewly replaced him as a co-director along with one Bina Saren.
Effort to escape disqualification
Under the Tenth schedule of the Constitution—the anti-defection law—voluntarily giving up the membership of the original party or voting against its whip is treated as defection. Members indulging in such practices can be disqualified.
The only defence available for a dissident group against disqualification is a merger with another political party. Earlier in 2016, Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu left the Indian National Congress along with 43 legislators and joined the People’s Party of Arunachal (PPA), which had become part of the BJP-led North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA). In December that year, Khandu officially switched to the BJP along with 32 legislators of the PPA.
Experts had earlier told ThePrint that while the law on mergers is still unsettled, it may not be enough for two-thirds of the MPs to be saying they want to form a separate bloc or align with the NDA. That arrangement needs to be preceded by an official merger of the entire organisation of the party instead.
However, the Bombay High Court had in 2022 allowed the “merger” of 12 Congress legislators with the BJP in Goa in 2019. The High Court was hearing a petition filed by Goa Congress Chief Girish Chodankar, who had challenged the Goa Assembly Speaker’s order rejecting the disqualification of the legislators.
The court said the merger of the legislators who joined the BJP was valid since they constituted two-thirds of their original legislative party. The judgement has been challenged before the Supreme Court and the petition is currently pending, but the high court judgement hasn’t been stayed.
(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)
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