No Recognition For Rebel MPs: Abhishek Banerjee To Speaker On Rebel MPs' Demand

Trinamool Congress, fighting a rift within, wrote to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla today, arguing that no recognition can be given to the rebel group of party MPs who wish to support the NDA, since it is always the political party and not the Legislature Party that stands supreme. 
In the letter, Trinamool number two and its parliamentary party chief Abhishek Banerjee wrote: "Treat the AITC as a single political party represented in the House solely through its duly authorised Leader and Whip, and decline to accord any recognition, status, or facility to any purported separate group or faction of the AITC."

"The AITC is a single, indivisible political party," he added. "The legislative Party in the Lok Sabha derives its very existence from and remains an emanation of the political party... No member or set of members can, by their own volition, carve out a parallel group or faction of the same party and claim independent recognition within the House," the letter read. 

This was the demand of the rebel faction, a group of 20 MPs, who had written to the Speaker earlier this week, seeking to establish themselves as a faction within the party. 

The MLAs of the Trinamool have already rejected the official choice of the party for the position of the Leader of the Opposition and obtained the Speaker's recognition for the party's Trinamool's expelled leader Ritabrata Banerjee, instead of party candidate Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay.

Abhishek Banerjee argued that the Supreme Court has clearly established boundaries in such cases. 

Quoting a relevant order from the court, the letter said under it, "The defence of a split stands abrogated".

"The law does not recognise the splintering of a political party into competing groups as a permissible event," Banerjee wrote. Instead, it treats such conduct through the lens of disqualification, he had added.

"The Speaker recognises the political party, not rival factions. The court held that where two or more factions claim to be the political party, the Speaker is to determine, prima facie, who the  political party is  for the purpose of adjudicating disqualification petitions under Paragraph 2(1) of the Tenth Schedule. The framework thus contemplates ascertainment of the one true political party -- not the conferral of independent recognition upon a faction," the letter read.

The rebel group, spear-headed by Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, claimed today that their numbers are up by two. 

"We had spoken to those who have been voicing discontent with the situation in West Bengal. One or two more will join us. Earlier, I had said 20; now it's 22. Everyone's opinion will be heard. There will be discussion, no dictatorship," she told reporters in Kolkata ahead of taking a flight to Delhi.

"We had spoken to those who have been voicing discontent with the situation in West Bengal. One or two more will join us. Earlier, I had said 20; now it's 22. Everyone's opinion will be heard. There will be discussion, not dictatorship," she had said. She, however, did not name the new MPs. 

The Speaker would meet the rebels tomorrow -- a week after they wrote to him - she said.