Expressing displeasure over the “delay” in holding elections to seven assembly seats in West Bengal Mamata BanerjeeThe Trinamool Congress on Wednesday said a party delegation will press for a meeting with the Election Commission on July 15 to continue as chief minister uninterrupted. Sukhendu Shekhar Ray, a senior leader of the state’s ruling party, also taunted the Election Commission, wondering whether it was “waiting for the third Covid wave” to hold elections.
Stating that the pandemic has come down significantly, Ray said the situation was conducive for holding elections. By-elections are to be held for five vacant seats, and fresh elections for two others where voting was canceled after the death of candidates.
The bypolls are crucial for Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who lost the assembly election in Nandigram to BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari. The constitution allows a person to hold a ministerial office for only six months without being elected to the state legislature or the two houses of parliament. It mandates that a minister who is not a member of the legislature for six consecutive months shall cease to hold office on the expiry of that period.
Banerjee needs to be elected to the assembly by November 4 to continue as chief minister. “We will meet Election Commission officials tomorrow (Thursday) in Delhi to demand holding of pending elections and bypolls in seven assembly constituencies. 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 bypolls. Is it waiting for the third wave? We want the bypolls to be held at the earliest,” Ray, TMC’s chief whip in the Rajya Sabha, said.
The Dinhata and Shantipur assembly seats fell vacant after BJP leaders Nisith Pramanik and Jagannath Sarkar MLAs resigned and were elected to retain their membership of Parliament. Pramanik was inducted into the Modi government during its recent expansion.
Mamata Banerjee’s Bhawanipur seat fell vacant when state minister Sovandeb Chattopadhyay resigned to facilitate her election from the seat. The TMC had fielded Chattopadhyay from Bhawanipur after the party supremo decided to take on his former guardian officer in Nandigram. The by-elections for Khardah and Gosaba seats in North and South 24 Parganas, respectively, are to be held after the death of TMC’s Kajal Sinha and Jayant Naskar due to COVID-19.
Elections for Samserganj and Jangipur seats in Murshidabad were canceled following the death of candidates and the latter was postponed indefinitely as the COVID-19 flared up across the state during the second wave. At present, Mamata Banerjee and Finance Minister Amit Mitra are the two non-MLAs in the ministry.
Mitra has expressed his desire to step down due to ill-health, but Banerjee needs to win a by-election to enter the state assembly. The TMC returned to power in May for the third time in a row, winning 213 seats in the 294-member assembly.
read all Breaking Newshandjob today’s fresh news and coronavirus news Here
.