No more journalists this time. Mamata Banerjee announced the nomination of Bollywood actor Mithun Chakraborty as her party Trinamool Congress candidate for the upcoming Rajya Sabha election in the State.
Chakraborty will fill one of the five Upper House seats that would fall vacant from West Bengal next month. Out of these seats to be vacated by the sitting left nominees three would go to the ruling party one would be taken by the left Front and there would be a contest for the fifth seat.
The Chief Minister wrote on her Facebook site that her party had decided to give one of the five seats to the Bengali megastar who not so long ago was seen pulling off a Bengali megahit in Minister Fatakeshto.
“In our State five Rajya Sabha seats, five Rajya Sabha members will be elected this time.” One of these seats will be given to Mithun Chakrabarty from All India Trinamool Congress,” the Chief Minister wrote on the FB site giving no details of what had transpired between her and former India cricket captain Sourav Ganguly who came calling at her new Secretariat office at Nabanna early this week.
By nominating Chakrabarty who has all along been close to departed Marxist leader Subhas Chakrabarty and his family Banerjee seems to have blunted the possibility of left-Congress tie-up in the RS elections insiders said. The left has 61 seats in the Assembly while the Congress has 39. Together the two parties can elect two candidates — “If there is some cross-voting in the Trinamool ranks which is possible considering recent cross-over of Somen Mitra a heavyweight Trinamool MP to the Congress sides,” said a senior PCC member and a former State Minister. Singly only the left can send one candidate and the Congress none.