The Trinamul Congress on Sunday announced the candidature of journalist Sagarika Ghose and former MP Sushmita Dev in addition to two others for the Rajya Sabha election from West Bengal while benching three sitting parliamentarians.
TMC [Representational Image]
The Trinamul Congress on Sunday announced the candidature of journalist Sagarika Ghose and former MP Sushmita Dev in addition to two others for the Rajya Sabha election from West Bengal while benching three sitting parliamentarians.
The Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamul Congress (TMC) announced the candidature of Sagarika Ghose, Sushmita Dev, Mohammed Nadimul Haque and Mamata Thakur for the forthcoming Rajya Sabha elections on Sunday. Sagarika Ghose is a journalist and the wife of journalist Rajdeep Sardesai. It will be her debut in party politics, while Nadimul Haque was already a member of the Rajya Sabha.
Mr Haque is the only sitting Rajya Sabha member of the party to get renomination. Mamata Thakur has earlier been elected to the Lok Sabha by winning the Bangaon by-polls in 2015. This will be her debut in the Rajya Sabha. Sushmita Dev, daughter of the late Congress stalwart Santosh Mohan Dev, is an erstwhile Congress leader from Assam.
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She joined the TMC in 2021 and became a Rajya Sabha member for a span of two years after TMC leader Manas Bhunia passed away after completing only four years of his six-year term. Dev will now be selected for full-term as Rajya Sabha MP, while Haque is set to start his third term as a Rajya Sabha MP after having been a member of the Upper House since 2012.
The three sitting Rajya Sabha members of Trinamul Congress who did not get re-nomination are Dr Santanu Sen, Subhasish Chakraborty and Abir Ranjan Biswas. Elections will be held for five seats in Bengal which are to fall vacant in April, along with 51 others in the rest of the country.
Going by the current numerical distribution of MLAs in the West Bengal Assembly, the victory of four Trinamul Congress candidates and one BJP candidate is assured. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), meanwhile, has renominated its Rajya Sabha member, Samik Bhattacharya. The announcement was made late tonight, with the party naming 14 candidates for the Rajya Sabha elections in seven states.
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