RS polls: 1 Cong, 5 TMC candidates elected unopposed from Bengal after Left's nomination cancelled

After high drama for 72 hours, the nomination of Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, the CPIM candidate for Rajya Sabha from West Bengal was declared invalid by Election Commission of India (ECI), after a final scrutiny on Monday.

As a result five candidates of Trinamool Congress and one of Congress get elected to Rajya Sabha uncontested. At about 11 am the ECI formally announced that Bhattacharya’s nomination stood cancelled as he had failed to submit all the requisite papers within time.

On July 28, ECI had raised questions about Bhattacharya’s application saying that he had filed his nomination after 3 PM which was the stipulated time. On Monday Left Front MLAs were told that the second affidavit, a mandatory paper required along with filing of nomination, was not attached with the nomination. Left Front MLAs admitted that it was an inadvertent mistake.

CPIM MLA Sujan Chakraborty said that it was a conspiracy against them. “We had the premonition that it would be cancelled. TMC had raised objection several times. The election commission had waited for 48 hours which shows the application had a lot of merit. It is unprecedented. We are victims of a larger conspiracy but we must fight up to the last,” he said. He added that if a voting process was to continue till 4 pm then people who had queued up at 4 should be allowed to vote and for that the time taken could exceed even 6 pm. He also said that the TMC were opposing Bhattacharya’s nomination because they were afraid.

TMC MLA and state education minister Dr Partha Chatterjee retorted saying, “Why should we be afraid? Don't they know this simple mathematics? There was no way they could win a Rajya Sabha seat with the kind of votes they have.”