Congress alliance in West Bengal has received a major jolt after West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee made a decision to support Congress candidate Pradip Bhattacharya in the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections.
"We have decided not to field a candidate for the sixth seat in the Rajya Sabha and we will support Bhattacharya".
The Left Front also jumped into the contest by nominating former Kolkata Mayor and Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Bikash Bhattacharya. The Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress has supported the Congress candidate, The Indian Express said. "We have managed to cement Congress-TMC relationship". The Congress has 39 MLAs in the Assembly, while the CPI (M) has 33. Out of the six, four are held by the TMC, one by the CPI (M) and one by the Congress.
Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, CPI (M) candidate for Rajya Sabha election said "Till now we have not decided whether we will join hands with Congress to fight the upcoming elections in West Bengal". With the present strength of the Assembly and the number of Rajya Sabha seats going to polls, a candidate will need about 43 votes to get elected to the RS.
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Biswanath Chakraborty, professor of political science at Kolkata's Rabindra Bharati University, said the Congress must have fielded Pradip Bhattacharya only after making sure that the chief minister would back him. This follows the decision of the CPI (M) central committee earlier this week that it will not seek the Congress's support for getting its candidate elected to the Rajya Sabha, even at the cost of isolation as an opposition party in West Bengal.
Bhattacharya is a former Bengal Congress president. CPI-M leaders argued that Bhattacharya filed his nomination in the morning and submitted the affidavit on personal assets two minutes before 3 pm, the deadline.
The Trinamool Congress has fielded Derek O'Brien, Sukhendu Sekhar Roy, Dola Sen, Manas Bhunia and Shanta Chhetri.
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