NEW DELHI: Will the Congress and the CPM realign once again to ensure that at least one of the five Rajya Sabha seats from Bengal falling vacant two months down the line do not fall in the Trinamool Congress kitty? If that’s the case, neither side is revealing too much yet.
But a meeting between the Congress vice president, Rahul Gandhi, and the CPM general secretary, Sitaram Yechury, in this backdrop, does gain significance. More so as Yechury is one of the five outgoing MPs representing Bengal in the Upper House whose term ends in July.
Yechury himself denied that the Rajya Sabha seat was one of the talking points when he met Rahul for an hour or so over tea and sandwiches at the latter’s parliamentary party office on Wednesday. Instead, the CPM leader insisted the discussion was on a range of issues — from EVM tampering, GST to farm loan waiver — the ways and means of raising it successfully in Parliament and outside.
However, since the Rajya Sabha or the government’s repeated moves to bypass the Upper House by expanding the scope of the money bill has been a point of contention between the Opposition and the treasury, it seems unlikely that the two leaders did not discuss the contours of the Upper House in the days to come.
Yechury and Congress leader Digvijaya Singh recently pushed through amendments on the Finance Bill, in the Rajya Sabha. Though it did not cause the government much sweat to get the amendments defeated in the Lok Sabha the very next day, it certainly was an embarrassment of sorts for the treasury.
In this context, Yechury’s voice and presence as a weighty and articulate counterpoint to the government and the Leader of the Upper House and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is indeed a point of political consideration, a Congress source said.
Neither the Congress nor the CPM can win a Rajya Sabha seat from Bengal without the support of the other. While the votes required to win a seat is 49, the Congress officially has 42 MLAs. However, two of them, including former Bengal unit chief Manas Bhuniya, has switched over to the TMC.
As the numbers stand, the TMC can easily pick up four seats. The fifth seat can be wrested by either the Congress or the CPM, only if they come together.
Apart from Yechury, senior Congress leader Pradip Bhattacharya and TMC MPs Derek O’Brien, Sukhendu Shekar Roy and D Bandyopadhya will be retiring. While Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee is likely to drop Bandyopadhya, Rahul, it seems, is not entirely averse to backing Yechury if he’s the candidate. “He’s looking at an alliance for 2019,” a senior Congress leader claimed.
There’s a catch though. The CPM usually never gives any of its Rajya Sabha members more than two terms and Yechury will be completing his second term when he retires in July.