New Delhi:
The Trinamool rebel MPs’ plan to “merge” with the Nationalist Congress Party is just a stop-gap measure and their aim is to take over the party name and symbol, much like the Shiv Sena or the Nationalist Congress Party. Sudip Bandopadhyay, once the right-hand man of party chief and former Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, made it clear today.
Pointing out that the bloc has the two-thirds of the party’s 28 MPs, he said, “this is the system” in such situations.
While the numerical strength is primarily needed to keep from falling foul of the anti-defection law, one cannot claim the party name immediately, he said.
“When you leave with two-thirds of the party, you cannot demand the name of that party on the first day… In July, we will make a demand to give us the Trinamool (name) since we have two-thirds majority from Trinamool. Then the court will decide,” Bandopadhyay said.
The rebel MLAs of Trinamool had claimed long ago that they were the “real” Trinamool.
But unlike Eknath Shinde — who claimed to carry forward the ideological legacy of Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray — they had not cited any reason for it. BJP sources claimed the rebel faction will claim to be the real Trinamool, forwarding multi-layered claims.
Sources said the Trinamool is not functioning in accordance with its own constitution, pointing out that several decisions were taken in violation of the party constitution. There would be details of how Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek Banerjee were making decisions arbitrarily.
The process of splitting the Trinamool will follow the precedents set in the cases of Shiv Sena, NCP, and the LJP, sources said.
The formation of a separate bloc or establishing the claim that a rebel bloc is the “real” party, however, ends up in court.
The “real party” formula, however, does not require a merger. But in case of Trinamool, the decision was taken to avoid legal complications ahead of the monsoon session of parliament.
Shortly before the rebels’ meeting with the Speaker, Trinamool’s Kirti Azad and Sagarika Ghose had met Om Birla with a letter from Abhishek Banerjee demanding that he turn down the rebels’ demand for a separate bloc, pointing to Supreme Court decisions that maintained the primacy of the party over the legislature party.
It is difficult to say how, with a merger in place, the demand for the Trinamool name and party symbol will play out in court.
The case involving the Shiv Sena split, when the party name and election symbol was awarded to the Eknath Shinde faction by the Election Commission, is still pending in the Supreme Court. The Uddhav Thackeray faction of the Sena has recently sought a hearing in hopes of a speedy decision.
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