By IANS
Kolkata : With local body polls approaching, West Bengal’s ruling communists and their rival Congress joined hands to ensure the win of a Muslim journalist in the Rajya Sabha biennial elections Wednesday. Four Left Front candidates also won.
The “alliance of supposed archrivals” ensured that the lone Trinamool Congress candidate, Dinesh Trivedi, was defeated.
Ruling Left Front supported-Independent candidate A.S. Malihabadi won the seat from West Bengal, halting the re-election of Trivedi.
While Trivedi got 31 first-preference votes, Maliahabadi swept the polls with 58 endorsements.
While the state Congress initially was against supporting Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) backed Malihabadi, the fear of ruffling minority sentiments and Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee’s decision to stick to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led it to support the communist nominee.
CPI-M central committee member and Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) president Shyamal Chakraborty won as he received 51 first-preference votes while Tarini Roy and Prasanata Chatterjee, both of the CPI-M, got 48 and 50 votes respectively.
Forward Bloc general secretary Debabrata Biswas also received 50 first-preference votes to win the elections.
Chakraborty has been elected as the Rajya Sabha members for the first time, while the other three Left Front candidates will have a second term in the upper house of parliament.