Trinamool announces 6 candidates for RS polls, three re-nominated

Kolkata, July 10: Trinamool Congress in West Bengal on Monday announced the names of six candidates for the forthcoming Rajya Sabha polls, three of whom are being re-nominated. Elections are to be held on 10 Rajya Sabha seats in Goa, Gujarat and West Bengal on July 24.

For the numerical strengths of Trinamool and BJP in the state Assembly, victory of six Trinamool candidates and one BJP candidate was assured on that day.

So unless Trinamool fields any candidate for the seventh seat it can be said for certain that there will be no polling on July 24.

The tenure for the six Rajya Sabha members from West Bengal that will come to an end includes that of Derek O’Brien, Dola Sen, Sukhendu Sekhar Roy, Shanta Chhetri and Sushmita Dev of Trinamool Congress and Pradip Bhattacharya of Congress.

At the same time, there will be a by-election for the chair of former Goa chief minister Luizinho Faleiro, who resigned both from his Rajya Sabha chair as well as from the post of Trinamool Congress’s national vice-president in April this year.

Of the six candidates announced by the Trinamool leadership, three have been re-nominated. They are Derek O’Brien, Dola Sen, Sukhendu Sekhar Roy.

The three new faces are Samirul Islam, Prakash Chik Baraik and the party’s national spokesperson Saket Gokhale, who mainly operates from Gujarat.

Shanta Chhetri and Sushmita Dev were not given re-nomination.

Since Congress does not have a single representative in the Assembly, they will be able to field any candidate after their existing representative in the upper house Pradip Bhattacharya's term ends. So is the case for the CPI(M)-led Left Front who currently has zero representation in the state Assembly.