Ten rebellious TMC MLAs receive notices from the Bengal Assembly regarding their request for disqualification.

Ten Trinamool Congress MLAs, including Leader of the Opposition Ritabrata Banerjee, who left the party, have received letters from the West Bengal Legislative Assembly. The MLAs have seven days to reply.  Arup Roy, Firhad Hakim, Sabina Yasmin, Biplab Mitra, Javed Khan, Rathin Ghosh, Sandipan Saha, Akruzzaman Ansari, and Shiuli Saha are the nine MLAs who were notified on Tuesday.

Following the filing of a case against state Assembly Speaker Rathindra Basu in the Supreme Court, the action, which was taken in response to complaints from a faction led by former Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, demanding the cancellation of the memberships of the ten MLAs under the anti-defection law, has sparked new political debate in the state.

Abhishek Banerjee, a member of the TMC, had already demanded severe punishment for twenty MPs who had left the Trinamool Congress to join the NCPI. He had written to Om Birla, the speaker of the Lok Sabha, requesting that their membership be revoked. The Speaker then sent notices to the MPs in question.

The state Assembly is also experiencing a similar situation, with Trinamool taking the same stance against MLAs who defected from the party to join the opposition. In a July letter to the Speaker, the Mamata-led group demanded that these “defector” MLAs’ membership be revoked. However, claims surfaced that despite a significant length of time having passed, the Speaker did nothing. The Mamata camp filed a request for disqualification with the Supreme Court on Monday.

In this context, the supreme court received a writ petition. Notably, in addition to the ten MLAs who defected, the Assembly Speaker was identified as a party in the lawsuit. News broke shortly after this case was filed that the Speaker had given the ten rebel MLAs a seven-day deadline.

Kalyan Banerjee, a senior member of the Trinamool Congress, has previously questioned the Speaker’s abrupt action and its timing. He questioned if the warning was being sent at the specified time or if it was being backdated.

“The Speaker has suddenly become active today. Even assuming the notice was issued on September 10, why did it not come to public attention until now? How did it surface so abruptly today? Action is being taken the very moment the writ petition is filed. What happened in the Lok Sabha is now playing out in the Assembly. The same pattern will be followed: they will seek time, and the Speaker will grant it. This is how Suvendu Adhikari’s cronies will be given more time.”