Rajya Sabha elections: Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya is Left-Congress candidate from West Bengal

The former Kolkata Mayor will file his nomination later this week

Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya. File photo: Sushanta Patronobish

CPI(M) leader and former Kolkata Mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya is the joint candidate of the Left parties and the Congress for the Rajya Sabha election from West Bengal.

He told The Hindu that he would file his nomination later this week. “Yes, I have been nominated as the joint candidate of the Left and the Congress. I will file it [the nomination] on March 12,” he said.

Mr. Bhattacharya, 68, is a prominent lawyer and had been the Mayor of Kolkata from 2005 to 2010. His name emerged as a consensus candidate after the CPI(M) Polit Bureau rejected the State unit’s request for the nomination of party general secretary Sitaram Yechury.

“Mr. Yechury was our first preference and when he is not contesting, our MLAs will support whomsoever the CPI(M) leadership nominates,” Congress general secretary Amitava Bhattacharya said.

Mr. Bikash Bhattacharya is acceptable to the Congress because he was instrumental in bringing the Saradha chit fund scam and the Naradha video tapes before the Calcutta High Court and had pressed for an investigation by Central agencies.

In 2017, the Left parties put him up for the Rajya Sabha, but he could not file the nomination before the deadline. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, he was the Left Front candidate in Jadavpur and was defeated by Mimi Chakraborty of the Trinamool Congress.

The Left parties and the Congress do not have enough strength in the Assembly to elect a nominee to the Rajya Sabha on their own.

However, if they come together, they can send one member.

The Trinamool Congress has announced four candidates: Mausam Benazir Noor, Arpita Ghosh, Subrata Bakshi and Dinesh Trivedi.