NEW DELHI: Rebel TMC MPs merged with Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI) to dodge disqualification provisions under the anti-defection law. Now they have taken over the party.Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, a longtime confidant of TMC chairperson Mamata Banerjee and who became the face of party’s Lok Sabha MPs’ rebellion against her leadership, was elected president of NCPI days before the breakaway faction of 20 MPs met Speaker Om Birla on Sunday to inform him of their merger with the little-known party, which has overnight shot into national limelight.Sources said the fourth-term MP was elected president on May 30 and, two days before that, the incumbent Shewly Kundu had resigned in what was apparently part of a mutually-agreed takeover of the largely obscure party by the rebels.The exercise was set in motion after the rebels first told Birla about their decision to walk out from TMC and that they enjoyed support of over two-third members of its 28-MP contingent in the House.Though BJP brass has made no official comments on their party’s association with the breakaway faction, West Bengal CM Suvendu Adhikari, Union minister Bhupender Yadav and seasoned MP Nishikant Dubey have been involved in discussion with them, helping shape their strategy and future course of action.BJP, too, has not been really shy about its role as quite a few meetings of the rebels occurred at the residence of Yadav.It finally culminated in 20 rebel MPs informing Birla on Sunday about their decision to merge with NCPI and to be part of the BJP-led NDA. They urged him to allot them seats with the governing alliance as they were until Parliament’s last session part of the opposition benches as TMC members led by Abhishek Banerjee, Mamata’s nephew and putative heir who has become the lightning rod of their anger and disaffection due to his alleged arrogance and circumvention of party’s internal structures.Sixth-term parliamentarian Sudip Bandyopadhyay is the senior-most member among the rebels but he joined them only a few days back and after Kakoli’s election as NCPI president by the party’s “political affairs committee”.NCPI was registered as a political party in January 2023, with a building in Sankarail in West Bengal’s Howrah district as its address in EC’s records. It had fielded four candidates in Tripura assembly polls in 2023, and 536 votes was the most one of them had fetched.EC has recorded it as one of over 2000 registered unrecognised political parties (RUPPs), organisations which have not yet met the criteria required to be recognised as state or national parties. If Birla approves the merger, NCPI will become the fifth largest party in Lok Sabha and second biggest constituent of the governing NDA after BJP. Quite some turnaround in the fortunes of a party which never had any member in Parliament or a state assembly.