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TMC to abstain from voting in vice-presidential election on August 6
TMC leaders said that Opposition’s candidate and senior Congress leader Margaret Alva shares a very good equation with Mamata Banerjee, but the vice-presidential election will not be held depending upon personal relations
The Trinamool Congress will abstain from voting in the vice-presidential election scheduled to be held on August 6 as the party was not consulted before the Opposition nominated its candidate, TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee said on Thursday.
“The TMC will abstain in the upcoming vice-presidential election. The question of supporting the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) candidate doesn’t even arise and the way the Opposition candidate was decided without proper consultation and deliberation with a party which has 35 MPs in both houses, we have decided unanimously to abstain from the voting process,” Abhishek, who is also the nephew of TMC supremo and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, said.
The decision was taken by Mamata Banerjee after a meeting with party MPs following the TMC’s flagship annual political rally on Thursday. The closed-door meeting was attended by 32 MPs. She left it to the MPs to take the decision and 85% of them said the party should abstain from voting.
Asked whether the TMC will hold the Congress responsible for this and whether this would weaken the opposition unity ahead of the crucial 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Abhishek said, “I won’t get into nitpicking at the moment. We had proposed three to four names and a consultation was in process. But they announced the candidate without discussing and consulting with the TMC. We object to the way the hara-kiri that was carried out at the last moment.”
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He said that initially the Congress called a meeting but the venue was suddenly changed to Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar’s residence. Asked whether the TMC was invited, he said, “I have no information. If they had sent an invitation, they should furnish it.”
TMC leaders said that Opposition’s candidate and senior Congress leader Margaret Alva shares a very good equation with Mamata Banerjee, but the vice-presidential election will not be held depending upon personal relations.
“Whatever happened (the way the opposition candidate announced) is not right and healthy for opposition unity. But that doesn’t mean there is no opposition unity, because the opposition’s unity is not restricted to the election of the President or the vice-president. The bigger fight is on the road. We have to transcend above our egos,” Abhishek added.
The National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, picked West Bengal governor Jagdeep Dhankhar as its candidate for the vice-president election. On July 17, Sharad Pawar announced Alva’s name as the opposition’s face by saying that 17 parties were on board with the decision.
“This is not going to weaken the opposition unity in any way. If the Congress or any other political party, which is fighting the BJP, wants to reach out to the TMC over any matter, we are open to any kind of discussion and deliberation. TMC would be more aggressive in the days to come and put its entire might to fight the BJP,” he said.
In Thursday’s meeting chaired by Mamata Banerjee, the MPs also discussed the ‘aggressive’ strategy the party will take in the ongoing monsoon session of the Parliament and outside the Parliament.
“You will see that inside the house, outside the house, on the streets in West Bengal and other states, TMC is going to be a force to reckon with when it comes to taking on the BJP’s might. We will have a roadmap for 2024. We are open to any kind of discussion,” he added.
The Congress in West Bengal hit out at the TMC, alleging that Mamata Banerjee was hand-in-gloves with PM Modi.
“The TMC and the BJP are just two sides of the same coin. When all non-BJP parties were issuing a joint statement against the misuse of central agencies against Sonia Gandhi, TMC and Aam Aadmi Party didn’t sign it. AAP, however, lent its support verbally,” said Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, leader of the Congress party in the Lok Sabha.
“The TMC’s decision to abstain from voting in the vice-presidential election is just like wearing a helmet, because they saw what happened to the opposition candidate in the Presidential poll. We have all seen where the opposition unity is heading,” Debjit Sarkar, a state BJP leader, said.
