Mamata fielding three women and Md Nadimul Haque as Rajya Sabha members from Bengal
Telegraph | 12 February 2024
Mamata Banerjee is fielding three women — journalist Sagarika Ghose, Matua
leader Mamata Bala Thakur and Northeast leader Sushmita Dev — and
author-journalist Md Nadimul Haque from Trinamul as Rajya Sabha members for the
four Upper House vacancies from Bengal to be filled later this month.
For the fifth vacancy — that of the Congress’s Abhishek Manu Singhvi, who
had won with Trinamul backing — which is likely to be filled by a BJP
candidate, the saffron camp announced the name of Samik Bhattacharya, the
party’s chief spokesperson for Bengal.
In a list of candidates announced by Trinamul on X in the afternoon, Mamata
nominated well-known journalist, author and civil society member Ghose, the
party’s principal face in the Northeast and former Rajya Sabha member Dev, and
prominent Matua leader and former Bongaon MP Thakur, besides journalist, author
and two-term Rajya Sabha member Haque.
“The choice of candidates clearly suggests they were handpicked by her
(Mamata), although the list was finalised after a discussion with her nephew
and party MP and national general secretary (Abhishek Banerjee),” said a
Trinamul insider.
He said Ghose was the only real surprise, even within some sections within
the party.
From Ghose’s show Question Time Didi, an audience-based interaction in
2013 with Mamata and students, the chief minister had infamously stormed out,
after being asked uncomfortable questions by a girl then studying at Presidency
University. The Trinamul chief’s on-camera accusation of the student being a
Maoist, because of her questions on the criminalisation of politics, had been
widely criticised.
Ghose, 59, has been a journalist since 1991, and was a primetime anchor for
the BBC World on Question Time India. She is an author of biographies of Indira
Gandhi and Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
A student of History who won a Rhodes Scholarship, she studied at St
Stephen’s College, Delhi, and the Oxford University’s Magdalen College and St
Antony’s College. The daughter of retired IAS officer Bhaskar Ghose, a former
director-general of Doordarshan, she is married to journalist-author Rajdeep
Sardesai.
“It is no secret that Rajdeep and Sagarika have been very close to Didi
(Mamata) for years. They visit her in Calcutta and Delhi…. But nobody here knew
either was mulling a career in politics,” said a Trinamul leader.
With the three women, the number of Trinamul’s women MPs in the Rajya Sabha
would jump to five from two, out of its 13 Upper House members. In the Lok
Sabha, Trinamul has eight women in its total of 22 MPs, excluding the recently
expelled Krishnagar MP Mahua Moitra.
“The chief minister struck a deft balance, ensuring better representation of
not only key sections of the Bengal electorate but also the northeast, where
the party aspires to grow. She also ensured that in Ghose and Dev, Trinamul
would have in the Parliament two powerful, anti-BJP voices that are women,” he
said, underscoring Mamata’s unwavering focus on empowering and wooing women.
Dev expressed her gratitude to Mamata.
“She has given me a chance to go to the Rajya Sabha again…. Mamatadidi has proven how much she supports women’s empowerment,” Dev said. “I don’t think many women from the northeastern states… have got the chance to reach Rajya Sabha twice.”
Another Trinamul MP saw “cleverness” in the candidatures of Thakur and Haque.
“The Matua leader, in the form of Mamata Bala, and the Muslim author-journalist-intellectual, in the form of Nadimul, are good, sensible choices,” he said, referring to two crucial communities in the Bengal electorate.
The three outgoing members denied re-nomination are the party’s Diamond Harbour-Jadavpur organisational district unit chief Subhasish Chakraborty, Ranaghat’s Scheduled Caste face Abir Ranjan Biswas, and north Calcutta physician Santanu Sen.
“They were deemed to have, somewhat, underperformed in Parliament,” said a Trinamul MP.