Rajya Sabha polls: Last-minute twist rules out contest in West Bengal

For the five Rajya Sabha seats from West Bengal, TMC initially fielded four nominees — former Lok Sabha MPs, Arpita Ghosh, Dinesh Trivedi, Subrata Bakshi and Mausam Noor; while the Congress and the CPM nominated Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya as their joint candidate. However, Bajaj, a businessman, joined the race with the backing of the TMC, leading to the possibility of a close contest for the fifth seat.

According to TMC sources, the party had fielded Bajaj as an Independent to scuttle the chances of CPM winning a seat and to thwart the BJP, which has only seven MLAs, from fielding a candidate. In the 294-strong Assembly, TMC can get four of its nominees elected, while the Congress and CPM one as one candidate needs the first preference votes of 49 MLAs.

With the nomination of Bajaj being cancelled, all the five candidates are now set to sail through.

The CPM and Congress had earlier challenged the nominations of Noor and Bajaj. In Noor’s case, the Opposition had alleged that there was a mismatch in the criminal cases in her 2019 Lok Sabha poll affidavit when she had contested from Malda (East) and her latest poll affidavit. They also claimed that she did not file a proper affidavit for criminal cases.

In the case of Bajaj, the Opposition claimed that his affidavits were self-attested without being stamped by the notary. To rectify it, the former TMC MLA filed an additional affidavit on Monday. However, the Opposition demanded its cancellation.

Acceding to the Opposition’s argument, the Returning Officer on Tuesday cancelled Bajaj’s nomination. However, Noor’s plea was accepted during the scrutiny.

“We had no proper planning. In the last hour, we decided to field a candidate against CPM’s Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya. If his nomination was cancelled and voting was to be held, then also Bajaj’s election would have been in question as he could not have won with the backing of the BJP MLAs. That would have damaged our party’s image,” a senior TMC leader said.

CPM’s Bhattacharya, a former Kolkata Mayor, hit out at the TMC, accusing it of hobnobbing with the BJP. “The TMC and BJP jointly tried to defeat a Left and secular candidate. But they failed. The alliance of the Left and Congress will be strengthened after this” Bhattacharya said.

State Congress president Somen Mitra also said that with Bhattacharya’s win certain, “it will give the Congress-Left alliance more strength”.