Trinmool Congress has nominated three new candidates and retained three old members for the proposed Rajya Sabha election.
The Rajya Sabha election will be held on 24 July and the last date for the submission of nomination is 13 July.
The new faces are Saket Gokhale, Samirul Islam and Prakash Chik Baraik.
Gokhale is one of the national spokespersons of Trinamool Congress. He is very active on social media. He was arrested twice for writing against the BJP on flimsy grounds.
Islam is a professor of Chemistry at a private college. He hails from Hason in Birbhum. He took a leading part in the ‘No Vote To BJP’ slogan in 2021.
Baraik is the president of Trinamooll’s Alipurduar unit.
The party has renominated Ray, Derek O’ Brien and Sen for the third consecutive time to the Rajya Sabha.
Ray, a veteran lawyer of Calcutta High Court, is associated with the party for many years. Sen and Derek O’ Brien are both national spokesperson of the party.
Trinamool dropped Sushmita Deb and Shanta Chettry. Deb, who is the daughter of veteran Congress leader Santosh Mohan Deb, joined the party in 2021.
She was asked to organize Trinamool in Tripura along with Rajib Banerjee.
Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay, state minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Trinamul state president and Rajya Sabha member Subrata Bakshi and deputy chief whip Tapas Roy went to the Legislative Assembly and prepared the nomination papers which include names of the proposers.
Political experts said the selection of the new faces is very important before the 2024 Lok Sabha election. The inclusion of Gokhale in Rajya Sabha will strengthen the party as he is well conversant with the national politics.
The BJP will get a seat in the Rajya Sabha. The party, it is reliably learnt, is considering the name of Swapan Dasgupta, think tank of the party. Das Gupta had contested from Tarakeshwar in Hooghly district in 2021 and was defeated. The saffron party is considering the names of Saurav Ganguly and actor Rituparna Sengupta as well. The party had tried to field Ganguly in the 2021 Assembly election and project him as the chief minister. But he declined. Now, he is the brand Ambassador of the BJP ruled Tripura.