The Lok Sabha Privileges Committee will hear West Bengal's Kanthi Lok Sabha Member P Sisir Adhikari on October 12 to respond to Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha leader Sudip Bandyopadhyay’s plea to disqualify him for switching his party.
Adhikari has moved over to the BJP but is understood to have informed the committee that he had not switched parties.
Bandyopadhyay had several times raised the issue with Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla for Sisir’s 'switching over' to the BJP.
The issue was referred to the Privileges Committee as Bandyopadhyay lodged a complaint against Sisir under the anti-defection law.
The committee headed by BJP’s Sunil Kumar Singh has asked Sisir to be present in the Lok Sabha and explain why he should not be disqualified as an MP.
The complaint against Sisir is that he had crossed over to BJP in March 2021 during the run-up to the assembly polls and attended a rally of senior BJP leader and union home minister Amit Shah at Egra in East Midnapore.
Earlier, his son Suvendu (who defeated Mamata Banerjee in the assembly poll from Nandigram assembly seat) had quit TMC and joined the BJP.
Sisir and his younger son Dibeyndu, also an MP, had skipped Trinamool’s Shahid Divas event on July 21.
During presidential elections while TMC decided to abstain from voting in the vice-presidential polls, Sisir voted, 'violating the party line.' With no action taken against rebel MP Sisir Adhikari more than seven months after the Trinamool Congress’s petition seeking his disqualification was referred to the Lok Sabha Privileges Committee, the party has again written to Lok Sabha Speaker.
TMC leader in Rajya Sabha Derek O’Brien had earlier said the disqualification process has been slowed down because the BJP is afraid of bypolls. “Disqualification will necessitate bypolls and the BJP is afraid of holding one knowing very well that they will have to face humiliating defeat,” O’Brien said.
Adhikari had quit Trinamool to join the BJP last year in the run-up to Assembly elections in the State. eom