Kolkata: The crisis engulfing the TMC deepened on Monday as 20 Lok Sabha MPs, led by Chief Whip Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, wrote to Speaker Om Birla declaring support for the BJP-led NDA, triggering a split in the party’s parliamentary unit and dealing a severe blow to Mamata Banerjee’s authority after the party’s Assembly poll debacle.
The development comes barely days after the TMC leadership suffered a setback in the West Bengal Assembly, where 58 of its 80 MLAs defied the party high command’s decision to appoint veteran leader Sovandeb Chattopadhyay as the Leader of the Opposition, and elected expelled MLA Ritabrata Banerjee to that post.
The political turbulence that has gripped the TMC since its Assembly election debacle appeared to spill over to its parliamentary ranks on Monday, with a group of dissident MPs extending support to the NDA even as party supremo Mamata Banerjee was in Delhi attending an INDIA bloc conclave to chart a pan-India strategy against the BJP.
Speaking to PTI over phone, Ghosh Dastidar said the MPs had informed the Speaker of their decision to support the NDA.
“Nearly twenty TMC MPs, including me, have decided to write to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and formally support the NDA. We have sent a letter to the Lok Sabha Speaker and stated that we want to support the NDA,” she said.
Sources said the dissident MPs intend to argue before the Speaker that Ghosh Dastidar continues to be the valid chief whip of the party in the Lok Sabha and that any subsequent changes announced by the party leadership were not completed through the required parliamentary procedure.
Mamata Banerjee-led TMC had decided to remove Ghosh Dastidar as chief whip and replace her with Kalyan Banerjee, but that was not communicated to the Lok Sabha secretariat, another rebel TMC MP told PTI.
Claiming that she continues to be the party’s chief whip in the Lok Sabha, Ghosh Dastidar said the decision was taken after consultations among fellow parliamentarians.
“We have accepted the people’s verdict and believe that our future political course should be aligned with the NDA,” she said.
According to sources in the dissident camp, the MPs have chosen not to immediately resign from the TMC or join the BJP. Instead, they intend to function as a separate parliamentary bloc while supporting the NDA, a strategy designed to ensure protection under the anti-defection law.
The arithmetic is politically significant. The TMC currently has 28 Lok Sabha MPs, with one vacancy following the death of Basirhat MP Haji Nurul Islam. The support of 20 MPs would comfortably cross the two-thirds threshold required for protection under the anti-defection law.
The development came a day after dissident MPs held a closed-door meeting in New Delhi and is likely to intensify questions over the authority of the TMC leadership over its elected representatives.
For Mamata Banerjee, the crisis has now moved beyond organisational dissent to the prospect of losing control over a substantial section of the party’s parliamentary strength, with potentially far-reaching consequences for both the TMC and the opposition bloc at the national level.
PTI