Trinamool's Manish Gupta may be elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha
KOLKATA: West Bengal's ruling Trinamool Congress candidate Manish Gupta is set to be elected unopposed for the Rajya Sabha seat vacated by actor Mithun Chakraborty as no other party has fielded any candidate for the seat.
Nominations for the seat closed on Tuesday. The election is due to take place on March 17.
Chakraborty had won the seat in February 2014 as a Trinamool nominee. Gupta, who was earlier the state's power minister, had defeated CPIM leader and the state's former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee from Jadavpur assembly seat in 2011. But he lost the seat in last year's assembly polls to CPIM's Sujan Chakraborty.
CPIM sources said the party had no plan to contest the election for the vacant Rajya Sabha seat as it does not have enough MLAs in the legislative assembly. The Trinamool Congress had won 211 of the 294 seats in the state assembly last year.
The Congress, which is the other main opposition party in West Bengal, said it had initially decided to contest the poll as it hoped to secure the support of some of its defected MLAs. But the party gave up the idea after cross-voting by legislators became “next to impossible“. “Casting ballots by legislators for Rajya Sabha elections is no more a secret affair,“ said Congress MLA Manoj Chakraborty.“Each MLA is bound to cast his or her vote for the party which they represent in the assembly.Moreover, every MLA would have to show his or her ballot to the representative of the party he or she belongs to before dropping the same in the ballot box.Naturally, cross-voting by legislators for Rajya Sabha elections is next to impossible.“
He said said the Congress could have compelled five of its defected MLAs to vote for the party candidate. “These MLAs, who left us after winning last year's assembly polls on Congress tickets and joined Trinamool Congress, would not be able to vote for Gupta as such acts by them might invite termination of their assembly membership. We wanted to contest this Rajya Sabha election only to teach our defected MLAs a lesson,“ Chakraborty said.
Nominations for the seat closed on Tuesday. The election is due to take place on March 17.
Chakraborty had won the seat in February 2014 as a Trinamool nominee. Gupta, who was earlier the state's power minister, had defeated CPIM leader and the state's former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee from Jadavpur assembly seat in 2011. But he lost the seat in last year's assembly polls to CPIM's Sujan Chakraborty.
CPIM sources said the party had no plan to contest the election for the vacant Rajya Sabha seat as it does not have enough MLAs in the legislative assembly. The Trinamool Congress had won 211 of the 294 seats in the state assembly last year.
The Congress, which is the other main opposition party in West Bengal, said it had initially decided to contest the poll as it hoped to secure the support of some of its defected MLAs. But the party gave up the idea after cross-voting by legislators became “next to impossible“. “Casting ballots by legislators for Rajya Sabha elections is no more a secret affair,“ said Congress MLA Manoj Chakraborty.“Each MLA is bound to cast his or her vote for the party which they represent in the assembly.Moreover, every MLA would have to show his or her ballot to the representative of the party he or she belongs to before dropping the same in the ballot box.Naturally, cross-voting by legislators for Rajya Sabha elections is next to impossible.“
He said said the Congress could have compelled five of its defected MLAs to vote for the party candidate. “These MLAs, who left us after winning last year's assembly polls on Congress tickets and joined Trinamool Congress, would not be able to vote for Gupta as such acts by them might invite termination of their assembly membership. We wanted to contest this Rajya Sabha election only to teach our defected MLAs a lesson,“ Chakraborty said.
