TMC rebels to merge with Nationalist Citizens Party. What is it?

There’s a new twist to the tale of the Trinamool Congress (TMC).

Some of the TMC rebels on Sunday met Lok Sabha Speaker Om Prakash Birla. They had one request: to merge with a political party known as the Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI).

The development came as the Mamata Banerjee camp reached out to Birla to ask him not to recognise any other party faction. The TMC has been engulfed in crisis ever since its defeat to the BJP in the recently held Assembly polls in West Bengal.

But what happened? What is the Nationalist Citizens Party of India?

Let’s take a closer look:

What happened?

According to The Hindu, on Sunday, 20 rebel Trinamool Congress MPs met the Lok Sabha Speaker at his 20, Akbar Road residence in New Delhi. They gave him a letter announcing their intent to merge with the National Citizens Party of India (NCPI).

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The group of TMC MPs included Yusuf Pathan, Satabdi Roy, Saayoni Ghosh, June Malia, Jagdish Basunia, TMC MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, and veteran TMC MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay. The MPs met at the official residence of Union Minister Bhupender Yadav, who was the BJP’s Bengal poll in-charge.

“We 20 MPs, who were elected from the AITC, have met the Speaker and given him a letter urging him to allow us to sit as a separate bloc. And these 20 MPs, who are more than two-thirds (of the strength of the AITC), this faction is with the Nationalist Citizens Party of India. We will work for the country and work with the NDA under the leadership of the Prime Minister,” Dastidar was quoted as saying by Indian Express.

“We have merged with the Nationalist Citizens Party of India. It is a political party. It is a recognised regional party. We have merged with it,” Bandyopadhyay added. “Court will decide later who is the real TMC. We met the Speaker and gave him our request.” According to the letter, the rebel TMC MPs wish to sit as a separate bloc in the House.

The letter was given to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla. PTI

This came as Mamata’s camp reached out to Birla’s office, telling him not to give “any recognition, status, or facility to any purported separate group or faction of the AITC”.

As per The Hindu, the rebels have taken the decision to do so in order to avoid any legal issues under the anti-defection law, which was added to the Constitution as the Tenth Schedule by Parliament via the 52nd Amendment Act, 1985. Under the original Act, a ‘defection’ by one-third of the elected members of a political party is considered a ‘merger’.

However, this was amended by the 91st Constitutional Amendment Act, 2003. The law now says that at least two-thirds of the members of a party must be in favour of a “merger” in order to be legal under the law.

What is NCPI?

The NCPI is a little-known political outfit registered in Bengal but based in Tripura.

As per News18, the NCPI was founded in 2020 by former Tripura minister and tribal leader Paban Kumar Das. It was originally focused on tribal welfare, nationalism and governance reforms. According to NDTV, the NCPI contested the 2023 Assembly elections in the state and made no impact. It was registered with the Election Commission as a Registered Unrecognised Political Party (RUPP) on January 20, 2023, in West Bengal just weeks prior to the Tripura Assembly polls. The party decided to make its political debut in Tripura rather than West Bengal.

The outlet quoted Election Commission records as saying that the party received total donations of just Rs 1.13 lakh. According to the party’s internal documents, the treasurer is one Shewly Kundu. She is also the director of two other groups registered at the same address in Bengal’s Howrah district as the NCPI: Biswabazar Private Limited and Paschim Banga Asangathita Mahila Karmi Association. The latter is a social work group.

Saayoni Ghosh has joined hands with the rebel TMC group. File Photo/PTI

The party chief is Kundu’s husband, Uttiya Kundu. Uttiya has put up a post of himself on Facebook with West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari.

According to India Today, the party’s slogan at the hustings in 2023 urged voters to reject “political turncoats”. “To save your rights, reject political turncoats. Support social workers, not political personalities,” the slogan read.

It contested the polls using the pen nib symbol, which was allotted to it as a registered unrecognised political party by the Election Commission. According to the outlet, Shantanu Saha oversees the party's activities in Tripura, while Tarun Kumar Roy is associated with its operations from Kolkata.

The party fielded candidates from four Assembly seats: Chawamanu, Ambassa, Karamchara, and Kailashahar. In Chawamanu, NCPI candidate Barjeda Tripura got 536 votes and finished fifth, just ahead of the NOTA tally at 500 votes. The constituency was won by BJP candidate Sambhu Lal Chakma, who defeated TIPRA Motha's Hangsa Kumar Tripura by 2,899 votes. In Kailashahar, NCPI candidate Jahangir Ali stood for election in Unakoti.

Barjeda Tripura, one of the party's former candidates, expressed shock after the merger. The 62-year-old daily wage labourer told PTI, “I contested the polls in 2023. What has happened now, three years later?” Barjeda said he contested after being approached by a person named Krishna Debbarma.

“In 2023, a person called Krishna Debbarma reached out to me about the election. So I contested. Many years ago, I was a supporter of the Congress,” he said. Barjeda’s election affidavit from 2023 shows assets worth Rs 4 lakh. It describes him as a social worker educated up to Class 8.

Senior TMC MP Sougata Roy has slammed the rebels. “Once you betray the party on whose symbol you were elected, how will you face your constituents? This merger is ridiculous. Who knows NCPI? Can they go to their constituencies and tell people that they are now part of NCPI? This merger reflects the desperation of the traitors to please their BJP masters," Roy told PTI.

As the old saying goes, politics makes for the strangest of bedfellows.

FAQs

1. What is the Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI)?

The NCPI is a Registered Unrecognised Political Party (RUPP) formed in 2023, registered in West Bengal but primarily active in Tripura.

2. Why are TMC rebels merging with the NCPI?

They aim to meet the two-thirds requirement under the anti-defection law, allowing them to legally merge without disqualification.

3. Has the NCPI had any electoral success?

No, the party contested a few seats in the 2023 Tripura Assembly elections but did not win any.

With inputs from agencies