It is not just inside the House that political parties squabble.
Room number 5 of Parliament House has become the bone of contention between the Telugu Desam Party and the Trinamool Congress.
Both parties claimed that the room, which is on the ground floor, was allotted to them. On Tuesday, some Trinamool Congress MPs walked to the room when the TDP members were not present and replaced the name plates with those of their MPs. When the TDP members returned, they restored the name plates of their MPs.
The TDP, which has occupied the room since 1984, was given two rooms on the third floor. But on Monday it had written to Lok Sabha speaker Sumitra Mahajan requesting that it be allowed to retain the old room to which it was "emotionally and sentimentally attached".
The room was allotted to the Trinamool Congress on August 6. The allocation of space to political partie in Parliament House is done on the basis of their numerical strength. But, in June, in the list of allotment of rooms, TDP was given its old room and the Trinamool Congress was allocated two rooms on the third floor.
A TDP leader said room number five was with the party even when its strength in Lok Sabha was just two. The TDP, a constituent in the ruling NDA, now has 17 members in Lok Sabha. In the last Lok Sabha, the TDP had six members. The Trinamool Congress is the fourth largest party in the House with 34 MPs.
Trinamool Congress' Sudip Bandhypadhyay and Sultan Ahmed claimed that the ground floor room was allotted to their party by the speaker.
TDP MP YS Chowdhury led a ten-member delegation to parliamentary affairs minister Venkaiah Naidu, speaker and secretary general. TDP sources said the speaker will call both sides and resolve the matter.
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