FEATURE STORY
The Trinamul Congress rebel MPs on Sunday announced their merger with the Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI).
The Calcutta High Court on Thursday made some significant observations on the recognition of rebel Trinamool Congress MLA RitabrataBandyopadhyay as the leader of the Opposition (LoP), questioning whether the Speaker could recognise a LoP without taking the consent of the political party concerned.
As the Trinamool Congress faces an unprecedented crisis, rumours are rife about a possible merger with the Congress party, triggered by a meeting between party supremo Mamata Banerjee and senior Congress leader Sonia Gandhi.
The internal fissures ripping through the Trinamool Congress (TMC) exploded into a full-scale parliamentary crisis on Sunday, June 14, 2026, as a powerful dissident faction formalized a strategy to break away from the party’s central high command. The rebel camp, marshaled by several disgruntled senior lawmakers, has officially scheduled a high-stakes meeting with Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla for Monday morning to demand formal recognition as a separate parliamentary group. Claiming the allegiance of a “substantial number” of sitting TMC MPs, the faction aims to bypass the rigorous penal disqualifications of the Tenth Schedule (Anti-Defection Law) by proving they hold a definitive two-thirds legislative majority of the party’s elected lower-house strength. In Kolkata, the core leadership under West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee moved swiftly to contain the damage, fiercely condemning the mutiny as a treasonous conspiracy orchestrated to erode the regional party’s formidable clout in New Delhi. While the TMC high command prepares a slate of immediate suspension notices and legal counters, the outcome of Monday’s memorandum submission remains heavily dependent on the Speaker’s structural ruling, a decision that could radically alter national opposition alignments and shift the power balance within West Bengal’s hyper-polarized political ecosystem.
Indian equity benchmarks surged on Monday, June 15, 2026, as the abrupt evaporation of the West Asia geopolitical risk premium triggered an aggressive global market rally. Reversing weeks of intense conflict anxiety, the NSE Nifty 50 soared 231 points to settle at 23,853.90, while the BSE Sensex advanced 736 points to close at 76,264.33, pushing the total market capitalization of BSE-listed firms to an unprecedented ₹462 lakh crore. The primary catalyst was a surprise U.S.-Iran ceasefire agreement scheduled to be formalized in Switzerland on Friday, which immediately sent Brent crude crashing 4.1% to $84 per barrel—its lowest level since March. This massive relief on imported inflation supercharged fuel retail, aviation, paint, and tire manufacturers, while sending the 10-year benchmark bond yield sliding to 6.8957%. Corporate actions shared center stage as billionaire Anil Agarwal’s massive Vedanta demerger reached its final milestone, debuting four sector-pure spin-offs—Vedanta Aluminium Metal (VAML) at ₹522, Vedanta Power at ₹41.80, Vedanta Oil and Gas (VOGL) at ₹38, and Vedanta Iron and Steel (VISL) at ₹20—on the NSE under a strict trade-to-trade delivery mandate. Simultaneously, on the policy front, Gujarat unveiled its Industrial Policy 2026 at Gandhinagar, expanding its priority sectors to 16 to aggressively capture global chip and robotics supply chains moving out of China
India opened their 2026 ICC Women’s T20 World Cup campaign with a resounding 64-run victory over rivals Pakistan. A historic five-wicket haul by Deepti Sharma and an aggressive half-century from Smriti Mandhana sealed the match for India before a record-breaking group-stage crowd in Birmingham.