BJP SHORTLISTS SIX CANDIDATES TO FIGHT MAMATA IN BY-ELECTION; CONG TO SIT OUT

KOLKATA: The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) West Bengal unit on Tuesday proposed six names to the party leadership in Delhi to pick a candidate against Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Mamata Banerjee from Bhabanipur where the bypoll is scheduled on September 30, even as the Congress announced it would not field any candidate against the chief minister.

“We have sent a list of six names to Delhi. It includes the names of Priyanka Tibrewal and Biswajit Sarkar among others,” said a senior BJP leader on condition of anonymity.

An advocate, Tibrewal is the vice-president of the BJP’S state youth wing. She was also a petitioner in the post-poll violence cases in the Calcutta high court, which ultimately resulted in the court ordering a CBI probe.

Biswajit Sarkar is the brother of BJP worker Abhijit Sarkar, who was murdered allegedly by TMC workers in Kolkata on May 2, the day election results were declared. Biswajit is among the petitioners to move the Supreme Court, seeking an SIT probe into allegations of post-poll violence.

The list also includes Tathagata Roy, veteran BJP leader and former governor of Meghalaya and Tripura, who has slammed some of his party colleagues over the debacle in the state elections. Rudranil Ghosh, who was the BJP candidate in the constituency in the elections earlier this year, also features in the list.

State Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said, “The Congress high command has decided that the party will not field any candidate against Mamata Banerjee. It is because that would help the BJP.”

“It is good that good sense has prevailed, and the Congress has realised that fielding a candidate against Mamata Banerjee may help the BJP in turn. As far as the BJP’S candidates are concerned, they can field their central leadership. They would lose with such a huge margin that in future they would think twice before contesting an election,” said Tapas Roy, TMC leader and spokesperson.