Sudip Bandyopadhyay, the senior-most rebel Trinamool MP, appears a front-runner for a cabinet berth in an upcoming reshuffle, sources suggested on Monday as the defectors awaited Speaker Om Birla’s seal on their merger with the little-known Nationalist Citizens Party of India.
Sudip, a long-time Mamata Banerjee loyalist and the last to join the turncoats, had been a junior minister in the UPA-II government.
There is speculation also about rebel Burdwan Purba MP Sharmila Sarkar getting a junior minister’s berth, although she herself claimed ignorance.
“It’s the media that is talking about it; I haven’t been told anything,” Sarkar told The Telegraph over the phone.
The Speaker’s seal on the merger will transform the unheralded NCPI into the second-largest bloc in the ruling NDA after the BJP with 20 Lok Sabha MPs, paving the way for ministerial positions for a few.
While there was no official notification from the Lok Sabha secretariat till late evening, sources said Birla had given in-principle consent to the merger and a formal announcement was expected soon.
Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam has 16 Lok Sabha members and Nitish Kumar’s JDU has 12. Both parties have one cabinet minister and one junior minister.
A meeting of the BJP’s senior leadership, including home minister Amit Shah and party president Nitin Nabin, and senior RSS functionaries was under way at defence minister Rajnath Singh’s residence on Monday evening.
Sources said the coordination meeting was discussing a possible reshuffle in both the government and the party organisation.
The final decision on the induction of some Trinamool rebels into the Union ministry would be taken by the party leadership, a BJP source said.
He, however, hinted that Sudip had agreed to switch sides after being promised a ministerial berth.
Sudip said the rebels had sought the allotment of an office for the NCPI in the Parliament complex during their meeting with Birla on Sunday.
“Om Birlaji told us to submit an application and assured us that the office would be allotted. Soon afterwards, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar submitted the application, and we are hopeful that we will get an office very soon,” he said.
An assurance from Birla about allocating an office would indicate he had decided to approve the merger.
The Congress accused Shah of orchestrating the defection and the merger.
“The ‘Nationalist Citizens Party of India’ could well end up becoming the second largest in the NDA, ahead of even the long-established and long-experienced TDP and JD(U), who should actually be protesting their downgrade through such underhand tactics and in such a disgusting manner,” Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh Ramesh said in a post on X.
He alleged the development was part of a broader strategy to secure a two-thirds majority for the NDA in the Lok Sabha. He accused Shah of undermining constitutional values and democratic principles, and said his continuation in office posed a threat to institutional norms.