New Delhi:
In a post on X, Congress General Secretary and communications in-charge Jairam Ramesh said, “A desperate Union Home Minister — who is an absolute disgrace to the position once held by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel — has taken Indian democracy to new lows in a shameless manner.”
Slamming Shah over the breakaway in the Trinamool Congress, Ramesh, who is a Rajya Sabha member, said, “He has masterminded the illegal breakaway of 20 TMC MPs and their wholly questionable fusion with an unheard of and reportedly registered but unrecognised political outfit formed just three years back.”
Ramesh said the Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI) could end up becoming the second largest constituent of the NDA, ahead of even the long-established and experienced TDP and JD(U), which, he said, should be protesting their downgrade through “underhand tactics”.
“This bizarre move is part of the Union Home Minister’s strategy to engineer a two-thirds majority for the NDA in the Lok Sabha. Decency, decorum, and devotion to constitutional values and principles remain vulnerable and threatened every day he continues in office,” he added.
The remarks came a day after rebel Trinamool Congress MPs first met Union Minister Bhupender Yadav at his residence on Sunday and later met Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla.
The group submitted a letter to Birla stating that they had merged with the NCPI, a party formed in 2022 that last contested elections in 2023.
The NCPI currently has no elected representative in any legislature across the country.
According to a Lok Sabha functionary, the Speaker will verify the signatures of the 20 MPs before taking a decision on recognising the merger.
On Sunday, ahead of the rebel MPs’ meeting with Birla, Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha MP Sagarika Ghose and Lok Sabha MP Kirti Azad approached him with a letter from the party’s Lok Sabha floor leader, Abhishek Banerjee.
In the letter, Abhishek Banerjee argued that a split within a political party cannot be recognised under the existing anti-defection framework and asserted that the Trinamool Congress remains a single political entity.
The Trinamool Congress has faced rebellion following its defeat in the recently concluded Assembly polls in West Bengal.