Kolkata, March 5 The ruling TMC and the opposition BJP filed nominations on Thursday for five Rajya Sabha seats from West Bengal, setting the stage for a largely predetermined Upper House election, which nonetheless carries political symbolism ahead of the high-stakes assembly polls.
Four candidates of the TMC – minister Babul Supriyo, former West Bengal DGP Rajeev Kumar, senior Supreme Court advocate Menaka Guruswamy and actor Koel Mallick – submitted their nomination papers in the assembly.
The BJP fielded former state unit president Rahul Sinha as the lone contender.
With the TMC commanding an overwhelming majority in the 294-member assembly, the party is comfortably placed to win four of the five seats, while the BJP is expected to secure the remaining one when polling is held on March 16, as part of biennial elections to 37 Rajya Sabha seats across multiple states.
The five vacancies arise as the terms of TMC MPs Subrata Bakshi, Ritabrata Banerjee and Saket Gokhale come to an end, along with the seat vacated earlier by Mausam Benazir Noor after she resigned and later joined the Congress. The term of CPI(M) leader and senior advocate Bikas Ranjan Bhattacharya is also ending.
Given the current arithmetic in the assembly, the outcome appears largely pre-determined unless any party fields an additional candidate that could trigger a contest.
With an effective strength of around 218 MLAs and the backing of several opposition legislators who crossed over without resigning from the House, the TMC comfortably crosses the quota required per candidate under the proportional representation system used in Rajya Sabha elections.
The BJP, whose tally has declined from the 77 seats it won in the 2021 assembly elections to around 65 due to resignations, defections, deaths and bypoll setbacks, is, however, expected to retain enough strength to win the fifth seat.
Despite the predictable arithmetic, the nominations reflect carefully calibrated political messaging by both parties, as West Bengal moves towards an assembly election season.
The polls are likely to be held in April.
The TMC’s candidate list blends political loyalty, administrative experience, legal stature and cultural visibility – a mix that observers feel reflects the party’s attempt to reinforce its broad social coalition ahead of the polls.
Supriyo, a former Union minister in the Narendra Modi government, joined the TMC in September 2021 after quitting the BJP following his exclusion from the Union Council of Ministers. He later won the Ballygunge assembly bypoll on a TMC ticket and currently serves as a minister in the West Bengal government.
His nomination is widely seen as a reward for his political repositioning and continued role in the state government.
Kumar, a former Indian Police Service officer who served as the Director General of Police of West Bengal and earlier headed the Kolkata Police, had been at the centre of a high-profile confrontation between the West Bengal government and central agencies during the probe into the Saradha chit fund case.
A senior advocate of the Supreme Court, Guruswamy was among the lawyers who represented petitioners in the landmark constitutional challenge that led to the reading down of Section 377 of the IPC in 2018, decriminalising homosexuality in India.
Mallick, a prominent actor in the Bengali film industry and daughter of veteran actor Ranjit Mallick, described her entry into electoral politics as “a new journey”.
“It’s a big responsibility. If I receive everyone’s love and blessings, I will try to fulfil it and work for people,” she said, arriving at the assembly with husband Nispal Singh.
Earlier in the day, Kumar reached the assembly well ahead of the scheduled time for filing nominations, and waited in the parliamentary affairs department secretariat before the other candidates arrived.
Guruswamy said she felt “honoured and proud” to have been nominated.
For the BJP, Sinha’s nomination is seen as an attempt to recognise a long-serving party leader and reassure its old guard in the state unit.
Party insiders said BJP state president Samik Bhattacharya had strongly advocated Sinha’s name before the central leadership, arguing that a veteran organisational figure deserved the opportunity.
Sinha, who has contested nine elections in the state - both assembly and Lok Sabha polls since 1998 without electoral success over the years - now appears set to enter Parliament through the Upper House route.
The election could also mark a historic political moment for West Bengal – for the first time since Independence, the Left Front is likely to have no representation in the Rajya Sabha from the state.
The CPI (M)-led Left Front currently has no Lok Sabha MP from West Bengal and no member in the assembly either, signalling a near-total erosion of the once dominant political formation’s institutional presence in both state and national legislatures.
