Trinamool Delegation To Meet Election Commission Tomorrow To Press For Bypolls

A Trinamool Congress delegation will meet Election Commission officials on July 15 to demand conduct of bypolls and pending elections to seven assembly seats of West Bengal, as the Covid situation has eased considerably.

The byelections are of critical importance to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who lost the assembly poll to BJP's Suvendu Adhikari in Nandigram.

The Constitution allows a person to occupy a ministerial position only up to six months without getting elected to a state legislature or the two Houses of Parliament. It mandates that a minister who is not a member of legislature for six consecutive months shall cease to occupy the position at the expiration of that period.

Ms Banerjee needs to get elected to the assembly by November 4 to continue as the chief minister.

"We will be meeting EC officials tomorrow (Thursday) in Delhi with the demand to hold pending elections and byelections to seven assembly segments. The assembly elections were held in eight phases when COVID was at an all-time high. But now the COVID situation has improved a lot."

"The Election Commission is delaying the by-elections. Is it waiting for the third wave? We want the by-polls to be conducted as early as possible," Trinamool chief whip in the Rajya Sabha Sukhendu Shekhar Ray said.

Dinhata and Santipur assembly seats fell vacant after BJP leaders Nisith Pramanik and Jagannath Sarkar resigned as MLAs and chose to retain their membership of Parliament.

Mr Pramanik was inducted into the Modi government during its recent expansion.

Mamata Banerjee's pocket borough of Bhawanipore fell vacant after state minister Sovandeb Chattopadhyay resigned to facilitate her election from the seat. The Trinamool had fielded Chattopadhyay from Bhawanipore after the party chief decided to take on her former protege Mr Adhikari in Nandigram.

Byelections to Khardah and Gosaba seats in North and South 24 Parganas respectively are to be held after the death of Trinamool's Kajal Sinha and Jayanta Naskar due to Covid.

Elections to Samserganj and Jangipur seats in Murshidabad had been countermanded following the death of candidates and later postponed indefinitely as COVID-19 raged across the state during the second wave.

Currently, Mamata Banerjee and Finance Minister Amit Mitra are the two non-legislators in the ministry.

Mr Mitra has expressed his desire to step down due to ill-health, but Ms Banerjee needs to win a byelection to enter the state assembly.

The Trinamool had come back to power in May for a third consecutive term bagging 213 seats in the 294-member assembly.