Kolkata: Drawing the battlelines for the Rajya Sabha polls in West Bengal, former Trinamool Congress legislator Dinesh Bajaj on Friday entered the fray, amid indications that the state’s ruling party would support his candidature.
With six candidates now in the field for the five seats, the stage is set for voting on March 26, unless there are withdrawals or rejections of nomination papers before the poll date.
Bajaj filed his candidature at the last minute, literally, looking exhausted after having to huff and puff his way to the state assembly seconds before the 3 p.m. deadline.
On Friday, two Trinamool candidates, Mousam Benazir Noor and Arpita Ghosh, submitted their nomination papers. Two other Trinamool nominees, party national general secretary Subrata Bakshi and former union minister Dinesh Trivedi, filed their nomination on Wednesday.
Former city mayor and CPI-M leader Bikash Bhattacharya has already entered the fray as a joint Congress-Left candidate.
As per the arithmetic in the state assembly, the four Trinamool candidates are likely to have a smooth sailing.
With each winning candidate needing 49 first choice votes to make the cut, on paper Bhattacharya looks poised for victory as the LF-Congress command 52 votes.
On the contrary, after ensuring the victory of its four contestants, the Trinamool will have 18-26 surplus votes (the exact number looks hazy considering the floor crossing among the assembly members in recent years).
However, political observers are keeping their fingers crossed, considering Trinamool’s track record of ensuring cross-voting from opposition camps during past elections.
Bhattacharya, a senior lawyer and former advocate general of Tripura, is an anathema to the Trinamool, after having successfully fought court cases against the ruling dispensation all through the nearly nine years it has been in office. He also played substantial roles in getting the Central Bureau of Investigation to probe the Saradha ponzi scam and Narada sting footage scandal cases.
Besides, political circles feel the Trinamool is also reluctant to yield political space to the Congress-Left combine ahead of the coming municipal polls and the state assembly elections scheduled next year.
With the state’s largest minority community Muslims comprising 27 per cent of Bengal’s population according to the 2011 census, the battle is among the Trinamool, Congress and the Left to get these votes.
Left Front legislature party leader Sujan Chakraborty alleged that the Trinamool has fielded Bajaj as an independent according to a “secret deal” worked out with the BJP, which could transfer to Bajaj the votes of its six MLAs as also other legislators who have crossed over to its side from the ruling Aparty.
“Even then, the Trinamool will not win. So it is trying to use its money power to ensure cross-voting from the opposition camp,” said Chakraborty.
