New Delhi: Trinamool Congress leader in Lok Sabha Abhishek Banerjee Friday met with Speaker Om Birla and submitted 20 petitions against its 20 rebel MPs, seeking their disqualification.
Talking to the media after meeting the speaker, Banerjee said the rebel MPs, who have claimed to join the lesser-known Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI), should be disqualified from the membership of the House on the ground of leaving the party.
“Twenty people met the speaker and claimed they should be treated as a separate group. Later, we got to know those MPs claimed to have joined another party, NCPI; nobody has heard the name of this group. Even they had not heard the name of this party,” Banerjee said.
He said the 10th Schedule of the Constitution is clear that if a member voluntarily gives up their membership of a party, they are disqualified as MPs.
“So if (they) have been elected on a symbol and (are) claiming after two years that they are joining a new party, their membership should go,” he said.
He also said that the rule on two-thirds of the members merging with another party applies to the whole party, and not just the legislative party.
“Based on that I, as the leader of Lok Sabha of TMC, have submitted 20 different disqualification petitions against those MPs,” he said.
The move comes after Birla invited the TMC Lok Sabha leader to present his views on the issue before a decision was made on a demand by 20 rebel TMC MPs to recognise them as a separate group following their merger with the NCPI.
Banerjee also wrote to the speaker last week, urging him not to accord any recognition, status or facility to any group claiming to be a separate faction of the All India Trinamool Congress, contending that the Constitution and the anti-defection law do not permit the formation of a separate group within an existing political party.
PTI
