Key facts
- Twenty rebel Trinamool Congress MPs plan to merge with the Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI).
- The proposed merger is being compared to a 2016 political realignment in Arunachal Pradesh.
- Constitutional experts state that only a political party, not individual legislators, can merge under the 10th Schedule.
- The TMC leadership disputes the merger, citing Supreme Court judgments that differentiate between a political party and its legislative wing.
- The Lok Sabha Secretariat is seeking legal opinion on the validity of the merger proposal.
A group of twenty rebel Trinamool Congress (TMC) Lok Sabha MPs have informed Speaker Om Birla of their intention to merge with the Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI), a registered but unrecognised political party. This move has drawn comparisons to a significant political realignment in Arunachal Pradesh in 2016, where a large faction of Congress MLAs joined the People's Party of Arunachal (PPA) and later the BJP.
Constitutional experts, including former Lok Sabha secretary general P D T Achary, have pointed to Paragraph 4 of the 10th Schedule of the Constitution, which allows for disqualification exceptions in case of a merger. However, they emphasize that this provision applies to the merger of political parties, not individual legislators. Achary stated that MPs or MLAs alone cannot merge with another party; the leadership of the original political party must decide to merge.
The TMC leadership has contested the rebel MPs' plan. TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, in a letter to Speaker Birla, cited a 2023 Supreme Court judgment concerning the Maharashtra political crisis. This judgment differentiated between a political party and its legislative wing, asserting that protection under Paragraph 4 requires a valid merger involving the original political party, not just a portion of its legislative members.
Banerjee argued that the media's presumption that satisfying the two-thirds legislature party switch condition is sufficient is incorrect. He stated that there has been no merger of the political party itself, nor the creation of a new party named 'AITC'. A former Election Commission official described the TMC rebels' plan as an 'innovation' not covered by existing anti-defection laws or the Representation of the People Act.
The Lok Sabha Secretariat is currently seeking written legal opinions to ensure that any decision made by the Speaker can withstand potential judicial scrutiny if challenged in court.