Trinamool Congress MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar announced on Monday that 20 of the party’s MPs, including herself, had decided to lend support to the NDA, but there was no official word on it till Thursday evening. Nor was there any clarity on who constituted this group or how exactly they planned to break away from Mamata Banerjee — just several names swirling around, and theories about their possible next step. The Telegraph tries to answer a few questions many are asking.
Q: What is the legal position of the rebel MPs?
A: On Thursday evening, they were still listed as AITC (All India Trinamool Congress) members on the Lok Sabha website. In an interview to India Today, Kakoli had said on Monday: “Twenty of us. We have written to the Honorable Speaker that we want to be a part of the NDA.”
This, according to Ravindra Garimella, former joint secretary (legislation) in the Lok Sabha secretariat, “is strictly speaking an improper request” as it suggests a separate bloc and not a merger.
The concept of a breakaway or separate group no longer exists with the removal — through the Constitution 91st (Amendment) Act, 2003 — of the provision for a split, as contained in Para 3 of the anti-defection law of 1985.
“Any claim by any group of members of legislature parties that they may be treated as a separate bloc or a group is not legally tenable. So, the only option for such members or groups is to claim for a merger showing that they have the backing of two-thirds of the members and also that the merger has taken place with one political party,” Garimella said.
Q: Are individual letters of support necessary? If so, have the rebel MPs given these letters of support? If so, to whom?
A: Kakoli claims 20 Trinamool MPs have written to the Speaker seeking to be part of the NDA, but there is no official word on it from the Lok Sabha secretariat over 72 hours later.
Neither has any of the 20 MPs made the letter or letters public. Since there is no provision for a split, there is no format for it, either. Nor is there a specific format for a merger.
A single letter bearing the signatures of all the members seeking the merger can be given. But there is no bar on separate letters being submitted by each member seeking to be part of the merger.
Letters for a group’s merger are addressed to the presiding officer of the relevant House of Parliament. In the Rajya Sabha, three Trinamool MPs have individually submitted their resignations to the Chairman in the prescribed format. There is no such clarity about the plans of the rebel Trinamool MPs in the Lok Sabha.
Q: What is the Speaker’s role?
A: The Speaker has to decide whether the threshold for the merger has been met. While experts contend that the merger provision covers not just a party’s legislators but also the entire party structure, increasingly the threshold is calculated as two-thirds of the strength of the party in a particular House. In the case of Trinamool in the Lok Sabha, two-thirds comes to 19 of the 28 MPs.
Q: Is the Speaker’s decision final?
A: No, a judicial review is possible. The Supreme Court in 1992 struck down Paragraph 7 of the 10th Schedule, which barred courts from having any role.
Q: When does the Election Commission come into play?
A: The Election Commission gets drawn in when either faction of a party that has split claims to be the original party and stakes claim to the party’s name and election symbol. Recent examples of such successful claims are those by the Shiv Sena of Eknath Shinde and the Nationalist Congress Party of the late Ajit Pawar in Maharashtra. In the case of the seven Aam Aadmi Party Rajya Sabha MPs who merged with the BJP earlier this year, the Election Commission had no role to play.
Q: Does the anti-defection law come into play for each House separately or in combination?
A: The anti-defection law is enforced by the presiding officer of a particular House within its jurisdiction, whether it’s about the disqualification of members or a group’s merger with another party.