Once again delivering a masterstroke before the Rajya Sabha elections, Mamata Banerjee on Friday declared her party’s support for Congress nominee Abhishek Manu Singhvi. The move amounts to hitting two birds in a shot: By bringing Kalighat (Banerjee’s official residence) and Janpath closer and driving a wedge between the left and the Congress which were together fighting the Trinamool in Bengal.
At the end of a Trinamool Congress core committee meeting Banerjee said her party had decided to support Singhvi. “Both Mr Singhvi and Mr Kapil Sibal had been fighting many court cases for us. This was the best way through which we could show our gratitude,” she said adding “of course the Congress approached with a request to support him and then we decided to consider him for the fifth seat.”
In the other four seats the Trinamool will field Nadimul Haq whose term will end on April 2, Subhasis Chakrabarty a lawyer, Abir Biswas and Dr Shantanu Sen a medical practitioner.
By dint of its overwhelming number of MlAs the TMC is sure to win the four seats. For the fifth seat there was a talk going on between the Congress and the left who jointly have 65 legislators. Bengal Pradesh Congress president Adhir Chowdhury had gone on record offering his party’s support to a consensus candidate from the left and the Congress following which the left had started toying with names of actor Sabyasachi Chakrabarty and senior advocate Bikash Bhattacharya.
However with Congress finalizing on Singhivi’s name and Mamata Banerjee backing it “we have no other way but to field our own candidate though we may not win the elections,” said a senior CPI(M) leader.
Banerjee’s move bore immediate results with the CPI(M) announcing the name of Rabin Deb for the fifth seat accusing the Congress of breaking the talk process. “Talks were between the two sides when the Congress unilaterally decided to field Abhishek Singhvi without informing us,” left Front chairman Biman Bose said.
Now as the Trinamool chose to go with it we have no choice but to take a policy decision to field our own candidate,” left Front chairman Biman Bose said.
Both the left and the Congress had jointly contested the 2016 Assembly elections apart from organising coordinated moves in the Assembly for the pasts seven years.