Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress on Tuesday said that the party was not consulted by the Congress before nominating its leader K Suresh as the opposition INDIA bloc’s candidate for the Lok Sabha Speaker’s position.

Trinamool MP Abhishek Banerjee, “We were not contacted about this, there was no discussion. Unfortunately, this is a unilateral decision,” said Abhishek Banerjee outside Parliament when asked about the Congress’s decision.

Since the party took a call 10 minutes before the noon deadline for filing nomination papers, no consultation was done, sources said.

K Suresh, who will be facing the BJP’s former Speaker Om Birla in tomorrow’s election for the top parliamentary post, has already reached out to the Trinamool Congress and sought their support.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, on the other hand, met with Trinamool’s second-in-command Abhishek Banerjee to explain the sudden decision to contest.

The BJP had tried to persuade INDIA bloc leaders to back Birla for the post but they refused, accusing the ruling alliance of not following the convention of giving Lok Sabha Deputy Speaker’s position to the Opposition.

When asked whether Trinamool will support Suresh, senior Trinamool leader Sudip Bandopadhyay said, “We will have a meeting and discuss and our leader will take a call… it is a party decision”.

The election for the post of Lok Sabha Speaker will be held at 11 am on Wednesday. The candidate who receives more than half of the votes from the members present in the house becomes the Speaker. The NDA has 293 MPs in the 543-member Lok Sabha, whereas the opposition alliance has 232.

Birla will need 271 votes, half of 542 (Wayanad seat vacant), to win the election.

The Congress had made it clear that if the government expected a consensus on its choice for the Lok Sabha Speaker, the Deputy Speaker must come from the Opposition. BJP leaders claimed such conditions won’t work.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said Singh didn’t get back to party chief Mallikarjun Kharge on the latter’s demand for the Deputy Speaker post.

“The country knows that the Prime Minister’s words mean nothing. The Prime Minister says there should be cooperation, but does something else. Our leader has not received a callback yet,” he said.

Sources said the BJP will decide on the Deputy Speaker’s post at a later stage.