Twenty TMC MPs to merge with Nationalist Citizens Party, back NDA: Kakoli Ghosh

Trinamool Congress leader Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar said on Sunday that 20 of the party’s MPs will merge with the Nationalist Citizens Party and back the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance in the Lok Sabha, reported ANI.

Dastidar made the announcement after the MPs met with Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla earlier in the day.

“We, the twenty MPs elected from the AITC [All India Trinamool Congress], met the speaker and submitted a letter requesting to sit separately,” she told reporters. “These twenty MPs constitute more than two-thirds of our total strength.”

Sudip Bandyopadhyay, who is among the 20 MPs, said that the Nationalist Citizens Party is a regional party. He added that in July, the rebel faction will make the demand to give it the Trinamool Congress name since two-thirds of the party’s MPs are supporting it.

This came soon after TMC MPs Kirti Azad and Sagarika Ghose handed over to Birla a letter by party National General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee against recognising any separate faction of the Trinamool Congress in the House.

The letter was initially sent to the speaker on Wednesday.

The Mamata Banerjee-led party has 28 MPs in the Lower House of Parliament. Although the TMC had won 29 seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the MP from Basirhat has since died...

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