The election result on Friday has set political speculations afoot that the equation in Bengal politics will change with the Congress coming close to the TMC while the rift between the Congress and CPI(M) will grow as they had pitched candidates against each other for the seat.
The results for the Rajya Sabha five seats in West Bengal did not spring any surprise and ended as expected with four candidates of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Congress candidate Abhishek Manu Singhvi winning the seats. CPI(M) candidate Rabin Deb was defeated after he managed to secure only 30 votes.
Of the four TMC candidates — Subhasish Chakraborty, Nadimul Haque, Shantanu Sen and Abir Biswas — Chakraborty led the tally with 54 votes, Haque, Sen and Biswas got 52, 51 and 52 votes respectively. Votes of two TMC MLAs — Mrigen Maiti and Zakir Hossain — were cancelled owing to technical errors while three BJP MLAs refrained from voting.
The election result on Friday has set political speculations afoot that the equation in Bengal politics will change with the Congress coming close to the TMC while the rift between the Congress and CPI(M) will grow as they had pitched candidates against each other for the seat.
CPI(M) MLAs, however, said that the floor coordination with the congress would continue. Senior CPI(M) leader and MLA Asok Bhattacharya said, "We had fielded our candidates owing to some ideological reasons. It will not affect the floor coordination with Congress," he said.
Senior TMC leader and state education minister Partha Chatterjee said that they had supported Singhvi to make their fight against BJP stronger.
Another CPI(M) MLA Sujan Chakraborty, too, said, "Issue based floor coordination and Rajya Sabha polls are different. Why should it bring an end to the floor coordination?"
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