Rajya Sabha chairman has no authority over merger of parties, says TDP after four party MPs join BJP

New Delhi: Telugu Desam Party (TDP) parliamentary leader Jayadev Galla on Friday said the Rajya Sabha Chairman does not have the authority to approve mergers of parties, remarks that came after dissident TDP MPs claimed they have merged their Legislature Party with BJP. “We understand that the merger of political parties is possible only at the organisational level and not at the legislative level. TDP and BJP have not merged at the organisational level. Schedule 10, Para 4(2) (of the Constitution) is applicable only to determine disqualification, post-merger of parties. The Chairman of Rajya Sabha has no authority to approve the merger of parties,” he said after a delegation of five TDP MPs met Chairman Venkaiah Naidu on Friday. [caption id=“attachment_6861791” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  TDP leader Jayadev Galla after a delegation of party MPs met Rajya Sabha Chairman Venkaiah Naidu on Friday. Twitter/@ANI[/caption] Four rebel TDP Rajya Sabha MPs, YS Chowdary, CM Ramesh, TG Venkatesh, and GM Rao — on Friday claimed to have passed a resolution to merge Legislature Party of TDP with BJP and later joined BJP. Galla said that they had tried explaining to the Chairman the technicalities of the matter and would now write to the parliamentary affairs minister, too, and wait for their response. “If, a merger has taken place and if anybody objects saying member should be disqualified then Chairman, Rajya Sabha has to see if two-thirds of the members of the original party have agreed for the merger, then there is no disqualification. But he cannot determine if the parties have merged or not, this is what we explained to him,” he said. Speaking about the future course of action to be taken by TDP he said, “We will also write a letter to parliamentary affairs minister and see what steps they take and then decide the future course of action.” Earlier today, Galla said that being a Parliamentary Party leader he did not sign that resignation letter. “The TDP president (Chandrababu Naidu) did not accept it. I, being parliamentary party leader, didn’t sign that letter. Four members independently writing to merge the party, we are assessing if it’s legal or not. Three Lok Sabha and two Rajya Sabha MPs are still with TDP. So we are not sure if it is possible,” he said.