A narrow, unpaved side road in Hatgachchi village in Howrah’s Sankrail town, about 20 kilometers from Kolkata, leads to a two-storey house painted in green and saffron, with a cluttered garden in front.
The couple’s names – Otya Kondo and Shiuli Kondo – as well as their academic and professional details are prominently displayed on the iron gate at the entrance to the complex. While Otia is mentioned as the editor of a Bengali newspaper, a mathematics teacher and a yoga volunteer, his wife Shiuli is described as a lawyer in the Calcutta High Court.
The building, which until one day was a nondescript house, is the registered office of the Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI) – the unrecognized registered political party that made national headlines after a rebel group of 20 Trinamool Congress parliamentarians announced their merger with the little-known party.
Overnight, the three-year-old Indian National Congress became the fifth-largest party in the Lok Sabha — after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Congress, Samajwadi Party and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) — and made a mockery of the ongoing political turmoil in the Mamata Banerjee-led party.
The National Party was founded in January 2023, and contested three seats in the Tripura Assembly elections in the same year. Otia and Shuli are among the founding members of the party.
“The party was founded in January 2023. We contested some seats in the 2023 Tripura Assembly elections and the Panchayat elections in West Bengal. Although we contested the Tripura elections independently, we were with the NDA. [National Democratic Alliance]“Shole, who resigned about a month ago, told HT.
The indescribable house
Local residents said they knew the building housed a political party office, but were unsure of its leaders. “We knew that the husband and wife were running an NGO and a local newspaper. But I had not seen the newspaper. Only about three years ago, we learned that it was also an office of a political party,” said Uttam Das, a local resident.
On Monday, the front iron gate was locked from the inside and was guarded by members of the Canadian Police Force. Entry was not allowed.
“The first meeting in which the establishment of the party was discussed was held in June 2022. The party was registered at the Sankrill office in January 2023. There are about 15 founder members belonging to diverse fields,” said Santanu Dey, General Secretary of the CPM National Party. “We also had an office in Tripura, which was closed in 2024.”
As of Monday morning, most party functionaries were not aware of the merger. However, later in the evening, Dai confirmed merger talks within the party, although confusion persists over who held the talks within the Indonesian National Assembly. “A meeting was held today for the founding members of the party. We did not receive any communication from the TMC MPs till evening. If they contact us, we can merge and work together,” Dey said.
NCPI Youth General Secretary Titas Bhattacharya said: “We welcome the merger announcement by the TMC MPs. Until yesterday, we were a small political party with hardly anyone knowing about our existence. But everything suddenly changed in a dramatic chain of events… But we are not sure who took the decision to merge. We are still trying to figure it out.”
TMC rebel faction leader Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar told HT that Jyotiprakash Chatterjee is the NCPI president.
Unrest erupted in the TMC soon after it lost the West Bengal Assembly elections last month. At least 59 out of 80 MLAs have formed a breakaway faction while at least 20 MPs on Sunday told Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla that they have merged with NCPI.
