Uttar Pradesh poll shadow over Adhir Chowdhury-Abdul Mannan slugfest

KOLKATA/MIDNAPORE: When Pradesh Congress leaders Adhir Chowdhury and Abdul Mannan poured out their anger at “traitor” Manas Bhunia on his home turf at Sabang on Saturday, Congress workers all over the state kept fingers crossed because chances are that Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi may share this with Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee in the run up to the

Uttar Pradesh polls

. The outcome of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections is likely to influence Bengal’s future politics like never before.

The

Congress-Trinamool

spat at the state level will be put to test seven months from now when the

Rajya Sabha

tenure of six members from Bengal, including Pradip Bhattacharya and Sitaram Yechury, comes to an end on August 18. Congress then has to look for support from either Trinamool or the Left for at least three first preference votes to get their candidate elected to Rajya Sabha. With five Congress MLAs dumping the party to join Trinamool, the party is left with 39 MLAs when the golden number for getting through is

42 first preference votes

.

According to Trinamool sources, the party may lend its support to Pradip Bhattacharya for a second term and will see to it that the Left has no representative in Rajya Sabha from Bengal. “We have the numbers to get five Trinamool members elected to the Rajya Sabha. Of the six vacancies, one may go to Congress, but CPM won’t be getting any seat from Bengal,” said Trinamool Rajya Sabha leader Derek O’Brien.

The problem is that the Pradesh Congress is a divided lot. Many members gave a piece of their mind to Congress general secretary C P Joshi in a closed door meeting held recently at Uttam Mancha.

Joshi didn’t want to “put fetters” on the state unit over its anti-Trinamool stance, but there was an instance in the 2012 Rajya Sabha elections when Abdul Mannan had to pull out of the contest on the request of Congress president Sonia Gandhi because the party wanted to keep Mamata Banerjee, a key UPA II ally then, in good humour.

With all this in the backdrop, Bhunia didn’t hesitate to announce his taking the Trinamool flag at the Sabang gathering. “I have taken the flag from Abhishek Banerjee because this person has a promise. I didn’t leave Congress. The Congress suspended me. The two kalidas (Adhir Chowdhury and Abdul Mannan) at the helm of the state party have taken it to the brink. I will go to Behrampore and Champdani to campaign against them,” he said. Mannan, on the other hand, announced to move court challenging the medical certificate Bhunia has submitted to the Speaker of the assembly seeking leave from the coming session. “We will see to it that his membership in the assembly is dropped. A member who hides his identity on the floor of the house doesn’t deserve to continue as MLA,” the opposition leader said.

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