Mamata names four nominees for March Rajya Sabha polls

Kolkata:

Trinamool Congress (TMC) chairperson and West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee on Sunday named four former Lok Sabha members as the party’s candidates for elections to five Rajya Sabha seats from the state on March 26.

Of the nominees, former Union railway minister Dinesh Trivedi, theatre personality Arpita Ghosh, and former Congress MP Mausam Noor contested the 2019 Lok Sabha elections but lost. The fourth, Subrata Bakshi, is the party’s state unit president and a key back-room leader.

Announcing the decision on Twitter on Sunday, Banerjee wrote: “I am glad to announce that @AITCofficial will be nominating Arpita Ghosh, Mausam Noor, Dinesh Trivedi & Subrata Bakshi to the Rajya Sabha. As a part of my constant endeavour towards woman empowerment,

I am proud that half of our nominations are women #InternationalWomensDay.” The seats fall vacant on April 2 with the end of the tenures of painter Jogen Chowdhury, former bureaucratturned-minister Manish Gupta, industrialist KD Singh, newspaper editor Ahmed Hassan Imran (they all represented the TMC), and expelled Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Ritabrata Banerjee. The TMC has 229 MLAs in the 294-member West Bengal assembly, followed by the Left and the Congress with 26 each. The BJP has 13 members.

Based on the strength on the floor of the Assembly, the TMC’s victory is certain in four seats. The fifth seat could go to the Left and Congress if they support a single candidate. Whether TMC fields a candidate in the fifth seat will be decided later, party leaders said. HTC