Lok Sabha Speaker issues notices to 20 rebel TMC MPs amid Supreme Court case

Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla has issued notices to 20 rebel Trinamool Congress MPs on disqualification petitions filed against them, asking them to respond within seven days, hours after the Supreme Court issued notices to the same MPs in a related plea.

The development comes after TMC general secretary and Lok Sabha leader Abhishek Banerjee moved the Supreme Court seeking a time-bound decision from Birla on the disqualification petitions, which had been pending since the rebellion broke out within the party's parliamentary wing.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant, along with Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana, issued notices to the 20 MPs on Tuesday, and observed that the matter was "not a question of issuing notices" but of "concluding the proceedings within a time frame." The court did not issue notice to the Speaker's office or the Lok Sabha Secretary General after Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for them, told the bench he had instructions to state that the Speaker had already issued notices on the disqualification petitions.

The dispute follows a split within the TMC's Lok Sabha contingent after 20 of its MPs announced they had joined or merged with the Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI), a Tripura-based outfit, and sought separate recognition in the House. The rebel MPs have since functioned as an NCPI group in Parliament and participated in NDA proceedings.

The MPs named in the disqualification petitions include Kakoli Ghosh, Sudip Bandyopadhyay, Satabdi Roy, Prasun Banerjee, Rachana Banerjee, Sayani Ghosh, Mala Roy and Yusuf Pathan, among others.

The TMC has maintained that the MPs were elected on its symbol and that aligning with another political formation amounts to voluntarily giving up party membership, attracting disqualification under the anti-defection law. Banerjee's plea told the court that prolonged inaction on the matter was weakening the constitutional mechanism meant to check defections.

According to the petition, Banerjee had first written to Birla on July 27 seeking urgent action, and met him again on August 12, but the party said no concrete decision had followed.

The Supreme Court will take up the matter again after the rebel MPs respond to its notices.