New Delhi/Kolkata: The Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI), an obscure regional political party, formed in late 2022, that contested only three seats in the 2023 Tripura assembly elections with a slogan to reject “political turncoats” shot to national fame on Sunday (June 14) as a group of rebel Trinamool Congress (TMC) MPs announced that they would merge with it. The move, a bid to avoid legal hurdles of disqualification under the anti-defection law, was announced by TMC MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, one of the principle architects of the party’s parliamentary rebellion following its defeat in the 2026 Bengal assembly elections. Following a meeting with the Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla in Delhi, Dastidar claimed that the rebel group had support of 20 out of the TMC’s 28 Lok Sabha MPs and would merge with the NCPI, and support the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).While it is distinctly strange that a regional political party registered in Bengal, that has never even contested a Lok Sabha election, will now house a majority of the MPs of the fourth largest party in the Lok Sabha, what is even more ironic is that in the lone election that the NCPI contested, its campaign posters had warned voters against political defectors.‘If the party were to merge with the BJP, I would have no problem’The NCPI’s 2023 Tripura assembly election campaign posters on its Facebook page read: “Protect your rights by rejecting political turncoats, not politicians, join social workers”.The campaign posters list Shewly Kundu as president, Uttiyo Kundu as vice president and Shantanu Dey as organisational secretary.Even before the merger has taken effect on the ground, murmurs of discontent have already come to the fore within the party. Shantanu Dey, the party’s organisational secretary said to The Wire on the phone that the party should not welcome the TMC turncoats. “If the party were to merge with the BJP, I would have no problem. We admire Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and have supported the BJP in the past. But these TMC leaders, you know their record is not good in terms of corruption, Saradha, Narada, they are named in all,” said Dey.While the rebel MPs have cited corruption, organisational imposition of I-PAC, the elevation of former chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew and party general secretary Abhishek Banerjee as reasons for their decision to move away from the party after the poll defeat, many of them face active investigations into corruption scandals like Narada, Saradha, and Rose Valley. TMC MPs who have faced scrutiny in these corruption scandals include Dastidar, Prasun Banerjee, Satabdi Roy, and Sudip Bandopadhyay. Deepak Adhikari (Dev) faced the Enforcement Directorate, and former international cricketer Yusuf Pathan faced a major municipal land dispute in Vadodara, among others.‘I will not support this move’Dey said that neither him nor party workers would support such corruption-tainted leaders as a part of the merger. When asked how many members the party has, Dey pinned it at about 1,000. “I led the election in Tripura, but the decision taken without asking me is wrong. Till they speak to me about this, I will not support this move,” he said.The Wire has reached out to Uttiyo Kundu on the phone and over WhatsApp. Dey said that he had managed the party’s election campaign in Tripura in 2023 and managed all the candidates. While initially 7 candidates were supposed to contest, eventually only four were fielded.Election Commission of India records of the 2023 Tripura assembly elections show that while the party had fielded four candidates in Chawamanu, Ambassa, Karamchara and Kailashahar, the nominations of only three were accepted. The candidatures of Jahangir Ali (Kailashahar) and Barjeda Tripura (Chawamanu), were accepted. Krishna Kumar Debbarma is listed as an independent candidate on the Election Commission of India’s website but the NCPI’s Facebook page includes his campaign poster from the party. The ECI website shows Reeta Shil Halam’s nomination from Karamchara as rejected.The party won a meagre 536 votes in Chawmanu (ST) and an even lower 286 votes in Kailashahar.While the party was founded in late 2022, a letter seen by The Wire seeking its election symbol is dated January 10, 2023.Shoestring budget and support for BJPThe NCPI operates out of a nondescript building in Hatgacha village, Howrah, West Bengal. Its registered address doubles as the physical office for an e-newspaper and social trust named Jago Biswa, a moniker that sounds similar to the TMC’s own flagship party mouthpiece, Jago Bangla. While the party office bearers maintain a sister non-profit wing called the Paschim Banga Asangathita Mahila Karmi Association for grassroots labour mobilisation, its actual electoral machinery has remained completely invisible in its home state of West Bengal and neighbouring Assam and Tripura, thus keeping its local structures entirely behind the scenes.Dey said to The Wire that while the party is registered in West Bengal it had never contested elections in the state. While it sought to contest the 2026 elections in Assam and West Bengal, “financial issues” stopped the party from doing so.The shoestring financial realities of the NCPI, are laid bare in the audited balance sheets handled by chartered accountants M/s Roy Amit & Co. For the fiscal period ending March 31, 2023, the party’s initial financial operations were tightly contained, showing a total income of Rs. 1,13,075.00 generated entirely through donations from well wishers. Ultimately, this spending left the party with an exact general fund deficit of Rs 425.00 and a microscopic closing liquid cash balance of just Rs 75.00.The nondescript nature of the party and its top brass is also evident from an examination of the public profiles of its two top leaders.On Facebook, Shewly Kundu, is listed as a journalist, an ISO auditor, a partner of a law firm named “NO PROBLEM LAW POINT,” and a former mathematics teacher. She also serves as the president of the All India Anti-Corruption Forum and Secretary of Jago Biswa, yet she surprisingly omits any mention of the very political party she is heading in her social media profiles.Her husband, Uttiya Kundu, who manages the parallel Jago Biswa societal infrastructure, identifies himself as a mathematician, a law firm partner, an ISO auditor, a social worker, a naturopath, and a holder of diplomas in yoga and naturopathy.Following the BJP’s victory in the West Bengal assembly elections in May, the couple had celebrated the political shift on their social media pages. On one of her two profiles, party president Shewly Saha (Kundu) had hailed the election result as a historic day of liberation, proclaiming that it marked a monumental victory for Hindus for the first time in nearly 700 years since the era of Alauddin Khilji. Uttiya Kundu, shared a photograph alongside BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari, ecstatically declaring that the days of merely dreaming were over and welcoming a new dawn by wishing Adhikari an auspicious journey ahead as the next chief minister of Bengal.