New Delhi:
The Trinamool rebel MPs’ plan to “merge” with the Nationalist Congress Party is just a stop-gap measure and their ultimate aim is to take over the party name and symbol, much like the Shiv Sena or the Nationalist Congress Party.
Sudip Bandopadhyay, once the right-hand man of party chief and former Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, made it clear today.
Pointing out that the bloc has the two-thirds of the party’s 28 MPs, he said, “this is the system” in such situations.
While the numerical strength is primarily needed to keep from falling foul of the anti-defection law, one cannot claim the party name immediately, he said.
“When you leave with two-thirds of the party, you cannot demand the name of that party on the first day… In July, we will make a demand to give us the Trinamool (name) since we have two-thirds majority from Trinamool. Then the court will decide,” Bandopadhyay said.
The rebel MLAs of Trinamool had claimed long ago that they were the “real” Trinamool.
But unlike Eknath Shinde — who claimed to carry forward the ideological legacy of Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray — they had not cited any reason for it.
The formation of a separate bloc or establishing the claim that a rebel bloc is the “real” party, ends up in court, as happened in the case of Shiv Sena. The case involving the Shiv Sena split, when the party name and election symbol was awarded to the Eknath Shinde faction by the Election Commission, is still pending in the Supreme Court.
