New Delhi. Of the 20 rebel MPs of Mamata Banerjee's party Trinamool Congress who left TMC and joined Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI) after the West Bengal Assembly elections, 17 MPs can now join BJP. This claim was made by none other than one of them, rebel TMC MP Jagdish Chandra Burma Basunia. Cooch Behar MP Basunia says that all the MPs are planning to join BJP before Durga Puja. He also made a big claim about the three MPs who will not join BJP.
Basunia said that three MPs from minority community, Abu Taher Khan, Khalilur Rehman and Yusuf Pathan will not directly join BJP but all three will support NDA from outside. Basunia also said that more than two-thirds of the 20 members are leaving NCPI, hence the anti-defection law will not apply to all of us. Let us tell you that this statement of Basunia has come at a time when the Speaker of the Lok Sabha has issued a notice to all these 20 MPs on August 26, seeking their answers. They have time till September 22 to reply.
In fact, Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee had met the Lok Sabha Speaker and demanded cancellation of membership of these rebel MPs under the anti-defection law. The rebel MPs have demanded from the Lok Sabha Speaker to recognize themselves as NCPI MPs. These 20 rebel TMC MPs, including Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, Shatabdi Roy, Bapi Halder, Sayoni Ghosh, Mithali Bagh, Deepak Adhikari, had announced their merger with NCPI on June 14. Along with this, he also talked about supporting NDA.