Trinamool Congress National General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee received an e-mail from the Lok Sabha’s Secretariat seeking time-bound reply to the letter of his party’s members of Parliament to the Speaker
about their decision to jump ships, amid the ongoing meltdown of a party which until recently was ruling West Bengal. Now, the party has taken umbrage at this, according to a NDTV report, as it happened just when Banerjee was being interrogated by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).
The party has alleged that the e-mail was sent to Banerjee on Monday while Mamata Banerjee’s nephew and Diamond Habour MP was being interrogated by ED in the ‘signature scam’ case. He was asked by the lower house’s secretariat to reply to the letter by 4PM.
Banerjee was in ED’s Kolkata office till 11PM, Trinamool leader Kirti Azad was said in a letter addressed to the Lok Sabha Speaker, as per the report.
“He has no access to e-mail,” he was quoted saying in the report.
“When the interrogation concludes, we will inform him of the e-mail he received…,” Azad added.
The Secretariat of the Lok Sabha has taken cognisance of the TMC rebels’ petition seeking a merger with the little-known Nationalist Citizens Party of India and this e-mail to Banerjee follows that, sources quoted by NDTV, said. They also said that the process of the merger should be completed within a week.
Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool – thumped by the BJP – has been battling factionalism and discord since that defeat.
Ever since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the Bengal assembly election, Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress has been disintegrating at a break neck speed.
So far, enough elected representatives of the Trinamool Congress – both in the Bengal assembly and the Lok Sabha – have openly expressed their desire to form a separate block that they can comfortably dodge the punitive provisions of the anti-defection law. This faction includes Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, who is leading them, Satabdi Roy, Saayoni Ghosh, Yusuf Pathan among others.
The tenth schedule of the Indian constitution contains the anti-defection law. It was introduced by the Fifty-second amendment in 1985 to prevent political defections for personal gain.
The rebel MPs have mainly trained their guns at Abhishek, accusing him of being dictatorial and handing the party to his preferred coterie from the political consultancy firm – Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC).
