West Bengal: BJP leaders vie for attention as party decides on first RS member in 7 decades

After over seven decades, a nominee of the Hindu right-wing party is set to be elected to the Rajya Sabha from West Bengal.

The prospect has sparked a tug of war within the BJP, which is almost certain to get its first Rajya Sabha member from the state.

Several senior party leaders are lobbying to become the party’s first choice. The BJP with its current strength in the West Bengal assembly would be able to elect only one member out of the seven seats for which elections will be held on July 24.

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Elections are necessitated as Derek O’Brien, Sushmita Dev, Dola Sen, Shanta Chhetri, Sukhendu Sekhar Roy (all from Trinamool Congress), and Pradip Bhattacharya (Congress) are retiring on August 18.

A bypoll will also be held to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of TMC’s Luizinho Faleiro. The former Goa chief minister was elected from West Bengal and his tenure was to expire in April 2026. He resigned in April this year.

Falerio himself was elected in a by-election held in 2021, following the resignation of TMC MP Arpita Ghosh. She was elected to the Upper House in 2020.

Formula to elect RS members

A candidate will require the support of 43 legislators to get elected to the Upper House from West Bengal as per the number calculated using the specified formula. The formula is the total number of assembly seats or votes divided by (number of vacancies + 1) +1.

Since the West Bengal assembly has 294 seats and currently six seats have fallen vacant, the calculation would be 294/7+1= 43.

For the lone by-election, a candidate will however require the support of 50 MLAs because when the elections to the seat was held in 2020, the requisite vote to secure the victory was 50. It is because elections were held then for the five vacant seats.

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The TMC with 221 seats (excluding that of Mukul Roy) is sure to win five of the six seats apart from the lone seat for which by-elections will be held.

The BJP currently has 70 MLAs, including Roy, whose party affiliation remains contentious.

Since with its present strength the BJP can secure the victory of only one candidate, an intense competition is going on in the party to get the nomination for that lone seat.

Several aspirants in the fray

Former Rajya Sabha MP and journalist-turned politician Swapan Dasgupta, actor-turned politician and another former RS member Mithun Chakraborty, Bengal BJP spokesperson Samik Bhattacharya, former state president Rahul Sinha, and BJP national executive committee member and honorary director of Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Research Foundation Anirban Ganguly are among the BJP leaders eyeing the seat, according to party sources.

The party is, however, not very keen on any of the above names because none of them is a mass leader. The state BJP is toying with the idea of fielding Greater Cooch Behar People’s Association Chairman Anant Rai ‘Maharaj’, an influential Rajbongshi leader. The community comprises around 30 per cent voters in North Bengal that accounts for 54 assembly seats.

The problem with the ‘Maharaj’, a descendant of the erstwhile royal family of Cooch Behar, is his fluctuating political affinity, BJP sources claimed. He is maintaining close ties with BJP leaders as well as with the TMC chief Mamata Banerjee.

BJP keen on convincing the ‘Prince of Kolkata’

The BJP central leadership, meanwhile, has not totally given up its hope on former captain of the Indian cricket team Sourav Ganguly, said a senior leader of the party. The party’s top leadership would make another attempt to convince “dada” to don the saffron colour, he added.

The idea, he said, is to have an “effective” candidate to be the party’s first elected RS member from Bengal.

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The last Hindu-right leader to be elected to the House of Elders was Debaprasad Ghosh of Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) in 1952. The BJS was the forerunner of the BJP.

Former Rajya Sabha members Swapan Dasgupta and Rupa Ganguly were nominated by the President.