Trinamool Congress sources told The Indian Express that the party’s leadership is worried about “huge absences” despite repeated requests to attend the Assembly sessions, and will take action against the MLAs who were absent in the last Assembly Budget session.

To bring a sufficient number of MLAs to the last two days of the Budget session, TMC gave whip to MLAs for March 19 and March 20. On March 19, Wednesday, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee addressed the Assembly, and almost all MLAs were present. But on the day after, the last day of the session, Banerjee was absent, and more than a hundred MLAs did not show up.

A senior TMC MLA said, “We have now more than 200 MLAs, but even after the party gave whip, hardly 59 MLAs were present in the session. We are lucky that the (Opposition) BJP walked out of the Assembly. If they were present and asked to vote on the finance bills, then we may have lost in the vote.”

TMC sources said that after seeing the low attendance, parliamentary affairs Minister Sovandeb Chattopadhyay was furious. Chattopadhyay told The Indian Express that he asked the party’s Chief Whip Nirmal Ghosh to submit a report and mention how many MLAs were absent on the last day of the session.

He said, “We will discuss in the party’s disciplinary committee after getting the report from Ghosh. Then, the committee will decide what action can be taken against those who were absent on that day.”

“It has now become obvious that MLAs gather news on which day the Chief Minister will come and that day, almost all MLAs are present. A major section of MLAs were absent when the Chief Minister was absent. Even cabinet ministers were absent. Speaker Biman Banerjee was also annoyed seeing such behaviour of the MLAs,” said a senior minister of the TMC.