The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) now has 113 members in the Rajya Sabha after the Senate president agreed to merge a group of seven Aam Aadmi Party MPs with it, even as there was no response to a complaint from AAP seeking their exclusion.
On Monday, the Rajya Sabha Secretariat communicated the party’s relative positions in the Upper House, stating that the “merger” was allowed by party president C P Radhakrishnan. The total strength of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition rose to 149 members in the 245-member House. The 113 also includes five nominated representatives.
“There is no official communication other than the party’s revised position… which itself is an indication that the merger has been allowed,” said a Rajya Sabha functionary, requesting anonymity.
The party’s revised stance led to a letter from Sanjay Singh, one of the three remaining Rajya Sabha MPs and the party’s parliamentary party leader, to the Rajya Sabha general secretary, seeking clarification on the change in his party’s strength in “official records”, the date the change was made, and the person who authorized it.
Read also | AAP split puts ‘merger’ clause in defection law under scrutiny | He explained
On Friday, seven MLAs – Raghav Chadha, Sandeep Pathak, Ashok Mittal, Harbhajan Singh, Vikramjit Sahni and Rajinder Gupta, from Punjab, and Swati Maliwal, from Delhi – announced their decision to merge with the BJP. Since the seven represent two-thirds of the party’s 10 representatives in the Senate, they claimed to be immune from disqualification under the anti-defection law.
This certainly depends on interpreting the word “party” in the law to mean the legislative party (the strength of the party in the House of Representatives) and not the political party – a standard that has been followed in many similar cases.
The AAP on Sunday filed a complaint seeking to be disqualified. Singh said the merger was illegal because the law required the merger of two-thirds of the “original” party.
“After consulting constitutional experts and seeking legal opinion from (advocate) Kapil Sibal, I have sent a petition to the President requesting that the membership of these members be terminated in accordance with the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution,” he added.
The above-mentioned employee said there is still no information on the president’s response to Singh’s complaint. “The issue is not time-bound and is the president’s invitation…” the employee said.
Singh’s letter was also sent on Monday to the Rajya Sabha Speaker.
The Congress said the Rajya Sabha Speaker’s decision to accept the merger of the seven AAP MPs with the BJP was “not at all surprising”.
“The decision of the Rajya Sabha Speaker to accept the merger of the seven AAP MPs into the BJP is not surprising at all – in fact the only surprise is that it took so long and was not formally accepted over the weekend,” Congress general secretary in charge of communications Jairam Ramesh said in X.
The merger has come as a major blow to the BJP and the NDA which is now close to a two-thirds majority in the Senate. By the end of the year, 30 more seats will be vacated, and the BJP hopes to gain at least five more.
The Congress with 29 parties is the second largest party in Rajya Sabha followed by TMC with 13; DMK with 8; YSRCP with 7; Biju Janata Dal with 6; AIADMK with 5; Janata Dal (United), Samajwadi Party and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) with four each.
