E-Paper
In Rajya Sabha elections, BJP to get1st member from Bengal
The BJP will get its first elected member in the Rajya Sabha from West Bengal when biennial polls for 10 vacant seats in the Upper House are held next month.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will get its first elected member in the Rajya Sabha from West Bengal when biennial polls for 10 vacant seats in the Upper House are held next month.
The Election Commission on Tuesday announced the schedule for the Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat, West Bengal and Goa. The polling and counting of votes for these 10 seats in three states is scheduled to take place on July 24. The poll watchdog’s notification said that the retirement of current members was the reason behind the vacancy in these seats.
Among outgoing MPs, external affairs minister S Jaishankar and Trinamool Congress’s (TMC’s) Rajya Sabha floor leader Derek O’Brien are prominent parliamentarians. Both are set to return to the Upper House.
The largest chunk of seats – six out of 10 – are from West Bengal.
The BJP’s tally of 77 seats in the last West Bengal assembly election (the number has now dipped to 70 due to defections and resignations) can translate into one Rajya Sabha seat, which is likely to come at the cost of the Congress’s outgoing member of Parliament (MP), Pradip Bhattacharya.
The TMC, which holds 220 of the 294 seats in the assembly, is tipped to win the other five seats. It will also likely win a sixth seat, where the vacancy arose due to the resignation of Luizinho Faleiro, who became a TMC Rajya Sabha member in 2021. The party will remain the largest Opposition outfit after the Congress in Parliament.
To be sure, the Rajya Sabha has seen BJP leaders hailing from West Bengal become members earlier. But lawmakers such as Rupa Ganguly or Swapan Dasgupta were nominated to the Upper House by the President, and not elected by lawmakers. Before the 2021 assembly polls, the BJP was a fringe player in the state, a distant fourth in an electoral contest dominated by the TMC, Left Front and the Congress.
The exit of Bhattacharyya, a two-term MP, reflects on the erosion of the Congress in West Bengal, which sends the third-largest contingent to the Lok Sabha after Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra.
The Congress and the Left, who fought the 2021 polls together, drew a blank for the first time in the Bengal assembly.
The list of members whose terms are set to conclude in July and August, leading to the vacancies, are: Vinay Tendulkar (Goa), Dineshchandra Jemalbhai Anavadiya (Gujarat), Jugalsinh Mathur (Gujarat), S Jaishankar (Gujarat), Derek O’ Brien (West Bengal), Dola Sen (West Bengal), Pradip Bhattacharya (West Bengal), Sushmita Dev (West Bengal), Shanta Chhetri (West Bengal), and Sukhendu Shekhar Ray (West Bengal).
The notification for the polls will be issued on July 6, followed by the last date for nominations on July 13. The scrutiny of nominations will take place on July 14, and the last date for withdrawal of candidatures is set for July 17. The date of the polls is scheduled for July 24, with voting hours from 9 am to 4 pm. Vote counting will commence at 5 pm on the same day, and the entire election process is expected to be completed by July 26.
