Decision On Trinamool, Team Uddhav Rebels Before Monsoon Session: Sources

Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla will take a call on the matter of rebel MPs from Trinamool Congress and the Shiv Sena before the monsoon session begins, sources told NDTV today. The Speaker has met the Trinamool and Shiv Sena UBT leaders twice and heard both sides. 

A decision will also be taken on the issue of DMK and Trinamool MPs sitting apart from the INDIA Bloc. A discussion is on with legal and constitutional experts within the Lok Sabha Secretariat, sources said. 

The monsoon session will begin in July - the exact date is yet to be announced. 

The MPs have been making a beeline to meet the Speaker after the Shiv Sena UBT and the Trinamool Congress underwent a massive rift. Six MPs from Team Thackeray have joined the Eknath Shinde faction. 

The list of their grievances was long. Their biggest grievance -- that Uddhav Thackeray had planned to merge his party with the Congress, which they were vehemently against.  There has been no such announcement from the party, though senior leader Sanjay Raut had said that in the current political scenario it would be good for parties like the Trinamool Congress to rejoin the Congress.

In Trinamool, while 60 of its 80 MLA rebelled and declared themselves the "Real Trinamool" following the party's defeat in the assembly polls, 20 Lok Sabha MPs joined a little-known party - the Nationalist Citizens Party of India or NCPI - and said they would align with the NDA. 

The three remaining Lok Sabha MPs of Team Uddhav Thackeray who met the Speaker today, said Birla has said that "Justice will be done". 

"Even if they (the rebels) have two-thirds majority, it requires a complete merger of a political party and not just the two MPs," Anil Desai told reporters after the meeting. 

"We are the original party, and we are the foundational party. Uddhav Thackeray himself has conveyed a message that we are not involved in any kind of merger. We inquired about the rebel camp, and he (Birla) confirmed that he has received the letter from them," he added.

Arvind Sawant, who accompanied Desai for the meeting, said, "We also told him (Om Birla) that if any of MPs has written a letter or have approached the Speaker, we should also be informed about it, because we are the original Shiv Sena".

The Congress-DMK split, meanwhile, has complicated the seating arrangement, with the DMK seeking alternate seating arrangement away from the INDIA Bloc.