Morcha RS seat plea to Mamata

VIVEK CHHETRI
Darjeeling, March 13: The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha will write to Mamata Banerjee for Trinamul help to get its candidate elected to the Rajya Sabha, holding up hill sentiments to apply pressure on the chief minister and ensure a place for itself in Parliament.

The Morcha plea also indicates that Mamata’s failure to meet the party’s demand will not go down well in the Darjeeling hills which she has been wooing for sometime — starting with the formation of a new set-up for the region and shower of bounties now and then.

“We want Trinamul to help us nominate one of our members to the Rajya Sabha. We will be writing to Mamata Banerjee in this regard soon,” said Morcha general secretary Roshan Giri. The Morcha has four MLAs in the Assembly (one of them is an Independent backed by the party).

“The hills have always sent members to the Rajya Sabha,” he added.

The Left Front had regularly nominated a hill candidate to the Rajya Sabha. When it was in power, the Left had sent R.B. Rai and Dawa Lama, prominent leaders of the Communist Party of Revolutionary Marxists who were once with the CPM, and the CPM’s S.P. Lepcha and Saman Pathak to the Upper House. All four were from the Darjeeling hills. Pathak is one of the five MPs from Bengal whose seats will fall vacant on April 2.

Asked if the Morcha had chosen its candidate for the Upper House, the election to which will be held on March 30, Giri said: “Finalising a name is not much of a problem if Trinamul accepts our demand.”

Of the five seats, Trinamul will get three because of its 185-member strength in the 294-seat Assembly. The party will have only 38 votes in its kitty after its three nominees are elected with 49 votes each. (The figure is arrived at by dividing the number of Assembly seats that a party holds by the Rajya Sabha vacancies plus one.)

Under the circumstances, a fourth candidate from the Morcha for the Upper House is possible if Trinamul gets an additional seven votes from the Congress to reach the magic figure of 49.

According to a Trinamul source, Mamata may get a Morcha candidate nominated for the seat, saying that it would be the right move to uphold the interest of Darjeeling.

“In that case, the Morcha will get all our 38 votes…plus we can then ask the Congress to cast the remaining votes for the Morcha (which will have its four MLAs) from their kitty. This could be an option by citing the greater interest of peace and tranquillity in Darjeeling,” a Trinamul MP said.

The Congress has 43 MLAs, including Independent Hamidul Rahman. But the Congress itself has decided to field its own candidate and AICC’s Bengal-minder Shakeel Ahmed had called on chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday, requesting her to back the nominee. The Congress needs six votes to get its nominee elected to the Rajya Sabha. “We are considering fielding our nominee for the Rajya Sabha polls,” Ahmed today said from Delhi. A state Congress leader made it clear that his party would never vote for a Morcha candidate. “Instead, we want Trinamul to help our candidate sail through by giving only six votes out of its kitty of 38 extra votes,” he added.

Despite Ahmed’s statement and PCC president Pradip Bhattacharya camping in Delhi to prepare a list of three party nominees for party president Sonia Gandhi, the Congress’s chances have thinned with the Left announcing today that it would not lend its extra votes to others.

In the past, the Congress had taken Left help to send its candidate (Pranab Mukherjee in 1994) to the Upper House. But today the Left made it clear that its extra votes would be cast in favour of its own candidate. The Left also said that trade union leader Tapan Sen would be re-elected to the Upper House.

“We decided at today's meeting that the number of votes which will be in excess of that required to elect our candidate would also be cast in favour of Tapan Sen. We were unanimous in this regard,” Left Front chairman Biman Bose said at Alimuddin Street this evening after a meeting with the partners.

The Left has 61 MLAs and it will have an excess of 12 votes in its kitty after electing Sen. “All the 12 votes will be cast in favour of the CPM nominee. Why shall we support other parties,” RSP leader Monoj Bhattacharyya asked.(TT)