Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee has announced names of Arpita Ghosh, Mausam Noor, Dinesh Trivedi and Subrata Bakshi as the candidates from the TMC for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections, scheduled to be held on March 26.
The announcement on the nominations for the Upper House of Parliament was made by Banerjee on Sunday, putting an end on all speculations over the selection of nominees.
“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,” she tweeted on International Women’s Day.
All four candidates are former Members of Lok Sabha. Except Bakshi, the other three had lost the 17th general elections last year to their BJP rivals in the state.
Speaking to News18, TMC state president, Subrata Bakshi said, “I am happy. Mamata Banerjee’s instruction is an ‘order’ for me. I will give my best to take my party forward.”
Meanwhile, on being asked about her selection by TMC chief for the Rajya Sabha polls, Mausam Noor said, “Didi (Mamata Banerjee) has given me a wonderful gift on International Women’s Day. It is a big responsibility and I will try to fulfil it. I am honoured that Mamata di has felt that I am capable to handle this responsibility.”
In the midst of a growing rift among Trinamool Congress leaders in West Benagl, Banerjee is likely to face another internal challenge with the announcement of names for the Rajya Sabha elections as the tenure of three party MPs will come to an end on April 2.
The three MPs who are set to retire on April 2, are painter and Professor Jogen Chowdhury, journalist Ahmed Hassan Imran and businessmen-turned-politician KD Singh.
For the last three months, Banerjee has been working on a list of probable candidates to fill up the vacant seats, while keeping her close confidants in the loop to avoid any future confrontation within the TMC camp.
Ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, many of the TMC leaders had expressed their resentment when Banerjee announced the list of 42 candidates. She had dropped 10 sitting MPs to induct 18 new faces. At the time, senior party functionaries like Soumitra Khan, Anupam Hazra and Arjun Singh had openly rebelled and switched over to the BJP.
This came as a major setback for the ruling camp in the state as Soumitra Khan and Arjun Singh managed to win the Bishnupur and Barrackpore Lok Sabha seats, respectively on a BJP ticket. Only Hazra, who was expelled from the party on January 9, 2019 for anti-party activities, had lost to TMC’s Mimi Chakraborty.
“We have seen that sitting MPs from Coochbehar, Bishnupur, Jhargram, Bolpur, Basirshat and Krishnanagar were dropped during the Lok Sabha polls and how it had affected out party’s tally.
Therefore, this time our party supremo was very careful while selecting candidates for the Rajya Sabha seats. I think this will have some impact in the party as some may express their dissent over choices of names,” a senior TMC leader said.
Earlier, there was speculation that Omprakash Mishra or Mausam Benazir Noor, both of whom had switched over from the Congress to the TMC recently, may get nominated. “This proved true as Mausam’s name was finalised by Mamata Banerjee,” he said, while adding that BJP may try to create more rift in the TMC to rope in some of the big strong TMC leaders to ensure 2021 assembly poll win.
The notification for the Rajya Sabha elections was issued on March 6, with March 13 being the last date for filing nominations.
The scrutiny will take place on March 14 and March 18 is the last date for withdrawal of candidature. The elections are to be conducted on March 26. The votes will be counted on the same day.
Comments
0 comment