Lok Sabha Speaker to meet TMC leaders before taking a decision

NEw new delhi: The formal favourable reception for the merger of the renegade aggroup of the Trinamool u.s. Congress, which comprises 20 MPs, with the Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI) may be delayed as Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla decided he will meet the TMC’s leadership before taking a decision.The Lok Sabha secretariat wrote on Monday to Abhishek Banerjee , the TMC floor leader in the Lok Sabha, about a meeting following the latter’s appeal to the speaker asking him to not recognise any faction of the TMC. The letter suggested a meeting at 4 pm Monday but Banerjee was, at the time, being questioned by the Enforcement Directorate. It is likely the speaker will meet Banerjee later this week.“Speaker Om Birla will take a call on the issue of merger of 20 TMC MPs with NCPI only after hearing both sides. The speaker’s office has also emailed the TMC led by Mamata Banerjee,” said a senior official aware of the details.On Sunday, 19 Trinamool MPs met Birla and handed over a letter to merge with NCPI. Another rebel TMC MP Rachana Banerjee, who was in Malaysia at the time, met the speaker on Tuesday.The meeting with the TMC leadership is part of due process, but is unlikely to change anything.“This is a part of the standard protocol before a decision on split or merger is taken. It is highly unlikely that the merger would be rejected due to TMC’s objections,” said a senior Opposition leader who asked not to be named.TMC MP Saugata Roy welcomed the meeting: “It is a good thing. It is the speaker’s duty to be unbiased.”“There are many contradictions among those who have left. Some of them want to create another group, some want to join the BJP, but they have joined NCPI. We can already see different opinions within the same group.”By merging with the NCPI, the rebel group will try to escape the strictures of the anti-defection law. To be sure, they have already indicated that they will support the BJP-led NDA. That should work for the latter, which gets to increase its strength in the House, and also avoid antagonising its own workers back in West Bengal.TMC leaders said that party MP Kirti Azad also got a call from the speaker’s office informing him about the invitation. Lok Sabha officials mailed Abhishek Banerjee on June 15 at 2pm while he was being questioned by the Enforcement Directorate, asking him to come to meet the speaker by 4pm,according to a letter released by TMC.In one of the biggest defections in Parliament, at least 20 Lok Sabha lawmakers of Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress proposed to join a little-known political entity, the NCPI, strengthening the BJP-led NDA.The merger will increase the NDA’s strength from 294 to 314 in the Lok Sabha-- still short of 46 seats to secure the magical two-third majority in the Lower House. In the Upper House, the ruling dispensation can reach 155 seats, just eight seats short of the two-third majority.The TMC is also facing trouble in the state assembly, with 58 of its MLAs picking a leader of opposition different from the one picked by Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek Banerjee. The TMC has challenged this in the Calcutta high court. After being defeated by the BJP in the state elections, the TMC has seen dissidence and defections, and faces the prospect of a vertical split.