CPM gets Bloc to vacate a Rajya Sabha seat for CPI

Barun Mukherjee will resign later and the seat will be given to the Communist Party of India, Left Front chairman and CPM state secretary Biman Bose announced after a Front meeting today.

The Bloc’s other Rajya Sabha member is Debabrata Biswas, whose re-election is a prestige issue since he is the national general secretary.

With the CPM refusing to yield any of its three seats, and the CPI insisting it needs presence in the Rajya Sabha, the Forward Bloc was asked to sacrifice one of its two seats. The Revolutionary Socialist Party, another important Front member, has one seat.

It had been earlier decided that the CPM would put up three candidates, and the Front would re-elect Forward Bloc’s Biswas and back an independent. After electing the CPM and Bloc candidates, the Left Front will be left with only 35 votes, way below the minimum of 49 required to elect a candidate. Now, with Mukherjee stepping down, the CPI gets to field a candidate.

But, sources in the Bloc said Barun Mukherjee is upset with the arrangement even though the party's State Secretary Ashok Ghosh has agreed to the formula.

Biman Bose, announcing the formula on Thursday, said the Bloc has agreed to vacate a seat. “The date for Mukherjee’s resignation and the CPI candidate who will replace him are yet to to be decided,” Bose said.

In the Opposition camp, Dinesh Trivedi, the Trinamool Congress candidate, filed his nomination, even though his party has only 29 members in the Assembly, way below the 49 required to elect a Rajya Sabha candidate.

The Congress, with only 25 legislators, cannot on its own elect a person to the Rajya Sabha. It will either have to support Trinamool's Trivedi, or the “independent” that the Left Front proposes to put up. The Congress has so far not named a candidate of its own.