Mamata Banerjee Fields Diverse Candidates for Bengal's Rajya Sabha Seats

For the four Upper House seats from Bengal that will be filled later this month, Mamata Banerjee is fielding three women: journalist Sagarika Ghose; Matua leader Mamata Bala Thakur; Northeast politician Sushmita Dev; and author-journalist Md Nadimul Haque from Trinamul.

The saffron camp released the name of Samik Bhattacharya, the party's main spokesman for Bengal, for the fifth seat, which is expected to be filled by a BJP candidate and is that of the Congress's Abhishek Manu Singhvi, who had won with Trinamul's support.


Along with journalist, author, and two-term Rajya Sabha member Haque, Mamata nominated well-known journalist, author, and member of civil society Ghose, the party's principal face in the Northeast, Dev, and well-known Matua leader and former Bongaon MP Thakur in a list of candidates released by Trinamul on X in the afternoon.

According to a Trinamul source, "the selection of candidates clearly suggests they were handpicked by her (Mamata)," even though the list was finalized after consultation with her nephew, party MP, and national general secretary (Abhishek Banerjee).

He said that, even among certain members of the party, Ghose was the only true surprise.

The chief minister famously walked out of Ghose's Question Time Didi, an audience-based discussion between Mamata and students in 2013. This happened when a girl attending Presidency University asked him unpleasant questions. Because the student had questioned the criminalization of politics, the Trinamul chairman accused her on TV of being a Maoist. This charge was heavily criticized.

Ghose,59, has been a journalist since 1991. She formerly hosted Question Time India in prime time for BBC World. She is the author of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Indira Gandhi biographies.

A Rhodes Scholar in history, she attended St. Stephen's College in Delhi as well as Magdalen College and St. Antony's College at Oxford University. She is married to journalist-author Rajdeep Sardesai and the daughter of retired IAS official Bhaskar Ghose, a former director-general of Doordarshan.

There is no denying that Sagarika and Rajdeep have had a long-standing strong relationship with Didi (Mamata). They pay her visits in Delhi and Calcutta. But no one here was aware that was considering a career in politics," a Trinamul leader said.

With the addition of the three ladies, Trinamul's female MPs in the Rajya Sabha would reach five, up from two, of its thirteen members in the Upper House. A total of eight women make up Trinamul's 22 Lok Sabha MPs, omitting Mahua Moitra, the recently expelled MP from Krishnagar.

"By striking a skillful balance, the chief minister ensured that important segments of the Bengali electorate as well as the northeast, where the party hopes to expand, would be better represented. She also made sure that Trinamul would have two strong, female voices opposing the BJP in the Parliament in Ghose and Dev, he said, highlighting Mamata's persistent commitment to empowering and courting women.

Dev thanked Mamata for everything.

"She has provided me with an opportunity to return to the Rajya Sabha. Dev said, "Mamatadidi has shown her strong support for women's emancipation. Few women from the northeastern states, in my opinion, have had the opportunity to address the Rajya Sabha twice.

An other Trinamul MP deemed Thakur and Haque's candidacies to be "clever."

He mentioned two significant groups in the Bengali electorate: "The Matua leader, in the form of Mamata Bala, and the Muslim author-journalist-intellectual, in the form of Nadimul, are good, sensible choices."

The party's Diamond Harbour–Jadavpur organizational district unit president Subhasish Chakraborty, Ranaghat's Scheduled Caste representative Abir Ranjan Biswas, and north Calcutta doctor Santanu Sen are the three departing members who were not allowed to run again.

According to a Trinamul MP, "They were deemed to have, somewhat, underperformed in Parliament."

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