By IANS,
Kolkata : Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee Saturday sprung a jolt on alliance partner Congress by nominating its prominent leader Sukhendu Sekhar Roy as her party’s candidate for the coming Rajya Sabha polls.
Announcing Sukhendu’s candidature, Trinamool general secretary Mukul Roy said: “He had applied to Mamata Banerjee for being inducted into the Trinamool two months back. She has accepted his application and made him a party member.”
A member of the All India Congress Committee and secretary of the state committee, Sukhendu Roy is considered close to party heavyweight and union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee.
Slamming the Congress, he said he never got recognition in the party despite having served it for 42 years. “I was present in the Congress session at Durgapur (in Burdwan district of the state) in 1969. I have done so much for the Congress. But I have got only zero in return.”
“I have only been made a party state secretary. But unlike in a communist party, where the post of secretary is supreme, in Congress the position of a panchayat member is more important than that of a secretary.”
“I was not even considered as a candidate in the recent assembly polls. Am I so unimportant? I am not talking of important post, I am talking of due recognition, which I never got in the Congress,” said Sukhendu.
He said, in comparison, Banerjee has given him recognition through he has never done anything for her or the Trinamool.
State Congress president Pradip Bhattacharya said he would enquire into the matter and send a report to the party high command.
“It’s democratic party. People go to one party or another. Now he has joined our alliance partner. In democracy anybody can take such decisions if he feels he will get more opportunity there,” said Congress general secretary in-charge of West Bengal Shakeel Ahmed.
Sukhendu would be the fourth Rajaya Sabha candidate for the Trinamool, which earlier declared former bureaucrat Debabrata Bandopadhyay, editor of a vernacular daily Srinjoy Bose and the party’s media cell in-charge and quizmaster Derek O’Brien as its nominees.
In the present 293-member assembly, the Trinamool with 184 lawmakers can elect four Rajya Sabha members.
The Communist Party of India-Marxist, which has the strength to win one seat with support from its Left Front allies, has nominated Sitaram Yechury, who filed his papers Saturday.