Staff Reporter / New Delhi
Escalating its battle against the rebel faction, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Friday submitted 20 individual petitions to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla seeking the disqualification of 20 rebel party MPs under the Anti-Defection Law.
A TMC delegation led by party national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, accompanied by senior leaders Kalyan Banerjee, Sougata Roy, Mahua Moitra and Rajya Sabha MP Derek O’Brien, met the Speaker and argued that the rebel MPs do not qualify as a separate legislative group under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution.
Addressing the media after the meeting,
Abhishek Banerjee, the TMC leader in the Lok Sabha, said Paragraph 2(1)(a) of the Tenth Schedule makes it clear that legislators seeking to form a separate group must first resign from the party on whose ticket they were elected. “The 20 MPs have neither resigned from the party nor fulfilled the legal requirements, yet they are claiming to be a separate group,” he said.
He further contended that Paragraph 4 of the Tenth Schedule permits a merger only when at least two-thirds of the members of the political party, at the organisational as well as the legislative level, decide to merge with another party. “That condition has not been met in this case,” he asserted.
Banerjee also alleged that the rebel MPs were induced through monetary offers and intimidation to break away from the party, claiming that the TMC possesses evidence to substantiate the charge.
Expressing confidence in the legal process, Banerjee said the party expects the Speaker to decide the disqualification petitions within three months, citing Supreme Court judgments that call for expeditious disposal of such cases.