The polling process for 58 Rajya Sabha seats, including five from West Bengal is underway as this piece is written, and the Mamata Banerjee-led state government is backing Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi.
The polling process for 58 Rajya Sabha seats, including five from West Bengal is underway as this piece is written, and the Mamata Banerjee-led state government is backing Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi.
Although officially the number of MLAs of Congress is 42, 10 members had defected to TMC. Party leader and state education minister Partha Chatterjee said that they had asked those MLAs to vote for Singhvi, ensuring the required number to votes to see Singhvi through.
Poll process began at 9 am on Friday and will continue till 4 pm. Counting will begin at 5 pm. Of the total number of 294 MLAs, number of voters is 293 as one TMC MLA Kasturi Das has passed away. Three BJP MLAs will not partake in the voting process. Three Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) MLAs had assured their support for TMC candidates. Left Front has 30 MLAs. Of the five candidates after the first four candidates get 49 votes each to qualify, between the fifth and sixth contender, whoever gets the highest vote will go through. Congress candidate, in that regard has an edge because they have 42 candidates officially. Even if the 10 defected MLAs are counted out, Congress candidate Singhvi will have 32 votes to back him up, two more than the Left.
TMC’s support for Singhvi has initiated a new equation between Congress and TMC at the Central level. CPI(M) had put up several objections against the nomination of Singhvi alleging that he had concealed his age and that the affidavit was not proper but those were eventually turned down. Although most of the Bengal Congress MLAs said that their fight against the TMC, jointly with the CPI(M) would continue, few do believe that a crack in the relation between the two parties have definitely appeared. “What Mamata could not do in so many years, CPI(M) candidate for Rajya Sabha Rabin Deb has successfully done it,” said a senior Congress leader and party MLA.
Singhvi, too, has been avoiding any controversy so far. On Thursday when he was asked about the recent defection of two Congress MLAs to TMC which the ruling party had allegedly engineered, he said that he would reply to it after the poll process.
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