New Delhi: The Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) suffered a catastrophic blow on Monday after twenty of its Lok Sabha members decided to break away from the party and petition Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla to formally align with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) parliamentary party. The stunning development has pushed the West Bengal-based ruling party into a severe constitutional and parliamentary crisis.
Speaking on the historic development, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, the chief whip of the TMC in the Lok Sabha, confirmed that nearly twenty party lawmakers, including herself, have formally written to the Speaker to convey their definitive intent to join the NDA. She revealed that the decision was finalized after extensive internal deliberations among disillusioned parliamentarians who chose to align their future political course with the popular mandate at the Centre. Addressing her sudden replacement from the chief whip position by the party chairperson, Ghosh Dastidar dismissed the move as arbitrary and unilateral, asserting that such internal changes do not alter the established constitutional and parliamentary positions overnight.
The mass rebellion marks a potential split and subsequent merger within the TMC legislature party, echoing a similar constitutional maneuvers witnessed in the Rajya Sabha where seven Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) lawmakers recently merged into the BJP camp. Under the provisions of the Tenth Schedule of the Indian Constitution, the rebel faction safely circumvents the anti-defection law by meeting the mandatory two-thirds threshold required for a legitimate party split. With the TMC holding twenty-eight seats in the lower house, the faction required nineteen members to avoid disqualification. A parallel rebellion is simultaneously unfolding within the TMC’s Rajya Sabha ranks, where senior leader Sukhendu Shekhar Ray resigned on Monday, with several remaining upper house lawmakers expected to follow suit in a coordinated exit.
