Sudip Bandopadhyay, the leader of the Trinamool Congress in the Lok Sabha, spoke with Speaker Om Birla over the phone on Thursday, requesting that party MPs Sisir Adhikari and Sunil Mondal, who defected from Mamata Banerjee’s party and joined the BJP, be disqualified under anti-defection provisions.
In January and May, the Trinamool MP wrote two letters to the Speaker about the situation.
“I had a talk with Speaker Om Birla seeking disqualification of Sisir Adhikari and Sunil Mondal. He said that he will go through the papers,” Mr Bandopadhyay said.
Sisir Adhikari of Kanthi and Sunil Mondal of Bardhaman Purba, both elected on Trinamool tickets in the 2019 general elections, moved to the BJP before the assembly elections but did not resign.
On May 17, Mr Bandopadhyay wrote to the Speaker, requesting “disqualification of Sisir Kumar Adhikari as a member of the Lok Sabha, according to Rule 6 of the Members of Lok Sabha (disqualification on grounds of defection) Rules, 1985.”
Mr Bandopadhyay also stated that on May 12, he wrote a reminder to the Speaker about his earlier plea, which was filed in January and sought Mr Mondal’s disqualification under anti-defection provisions.
The Trinamool Congress exhibited its discontent on Wednesday with the BJP-led central government for “hurriedly” renominating former journalist Swapan Dasgupta to the Upper House of Parliament after he resigned from the Rajya Sabha and ran unsuccessfully in the recent West Bengal assembly elections on a BJP ticket.
Mr Dasgupta was renominated to the Rajya Sabha, but the Lok Sabha Speaker did not react to the Trinamool’s request to invalidate party MPs Sunil Mondal and Sisir Adhikari’s membership, according to Trinamool spokesperson Kunal Ghosh.
