KOLKATA: The Calcutta High Court on Thursday cancelled Mukul Roy's membership of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly more than four years after he had defected from the BJP to the ruling Trinamool Congress in 2021.
Roy had become a first-time MLA on a BJP ticket from Krishnanagar North constituency in Nadia district. But within a month of the assembly elections, he returned to his former party Trinamool Congress.
The court rejected the decision of Assembly Speaker Biman Banerjee who claimed that Mukul, once the number two in the Trinamool Congress after the party supremo Mamata Banerjee, was a BJP MLA.
The BJP had moved the court against him after he was made chairman of the Public Accounts Committee in the Assembly. The portfolio is traditionally held by a member from the Opposition camp.
BJP MLA and Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari said on Thursday, “The Speaker’s decision to claim Mukul Roy a BJP MLA was taken at the behest of the chief minister Mamata Banerjee. The move was a challenge to the Constitution.”
“Unfortunately, he was still called a BJP MLA though he had been attending Trinamool Congress meetings and other programmes. This is unprecedented and unheard of before,” Suvendu told reporters.
Roy was made Union railway minister for about six months in 2012 under former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. He was also a Rajya Sabha member representing the Trinamool Congress.
The anti-defection law has been tested again and again since the Trinamool Congress came to power in 2011.
A member of the House belonging to any party shall be disqualified if he or she has (a) voluntarily given up membership of a political party or (b) votes or abstains from voting in such House contrary to any direction issued by the political party to which he belongs, according to the 10th Schedule of the Constitution.
The onus to decide on defections depends on the Speaker, with no time limit to make a decision, it states.
As many as 16 legislators remained on paper with the Congress though they were politically active with the Trinamool Congress in 1998 when it was formed in the state.