Kolkata, June 24 (IANS) The faction within the Trinamool Congress that remains loyal to former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her nephew, Abhishek Banerjee, who serves as the party’s general secretary, has been further sidelined and marginalised in the West Bengal Assembly.

Not a single party legislator from this faction has been provided with any berth in the newly constituted crucial Business Advisory (BA) committee of the Assembly.

The BA committee is treated as one of the most important statutory committees of the Assembly. The committee members meet before every session of the House to discuss and finalise the detailed proceedings for the session concerned, including when the session would begin, how long it would last, what bills would be brought up in the session,

In simple terms, the BA committee controls the proceedings of the entire Assembly.

The newly constituted BA committee of West Bengal, a list of which is available with IANS, has a total of 19 “permanent members”, out of whom 14 are from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and five are from opposition Trinamool Congress.

However, all these five “permanent members” from the opposition bench are from the “rebel but majority” faction in Trinamool Congress’ legislative party in the Assembly, led by expelled party legislator Ritabrata Banerjee, who is now the official Leader of Opposition in the House.

Ritabrata himself is one of the “permanent members” in the newly constituted BA Committee.

Besides the 19 “permanent members” in the newly-constituted BA Committee, there are also 10 “invited members”, out of whom four are from BJP, and two are from Trinamool Congress, with one being from the Ritabrata-led faction.

Mohtab Sheikh, one of the two Congress members in the current Assembly, had also been included as an invited member. Even Md. Mostafijur Rahaman, the lone CPI(M) representative as well as the All-India Secular Front (AISF)’s lone representative, Nawsad Siddique and the lone Aam Janata Unnayan Party (AJUP), have been included in the newly-constituted BA committee as “invited members”.

Constitutional experts feel that since the MLAs, both from the “original but minority” and “rebel but majority” factions, are officially Trinamool Congress MLAs as per Assembly records, technically no question can be raised on the selection of the members of the BA committee.

–IANS

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