Fri. Mar 29th, 2024
Mamata Banerjee

Since all six legislators of Trinamool Congress of Tripura has declared that they will be supporting NDA’s Presidential candidate Ram Nath Kovind, the party leadership Mamata Banerjee is worried about its Bengal MLAs also going against the party and supporting NDA candidate.

While Banerjee is backing the opposition’s candidate Meira Kumar, there are possibilities some of her MLAs going against the party and Banerjee is taking extra measures to stop this. A senior leader also confirmed that few legislators and senior leaders are discreetly in touch with BJP and cross-voting is likely. Even Mamata had agreed in a public meeting earlier this week that some of her party colleagues were in touch with BJP.

The party is making all efforts to avoid the cross-voting, all the members are asked to reach to the assembly by sharp 9 a.m. on July 17 and report to Prabha Chatterjee, who has been bestowed with the extra responsibility of ensuring that all MLAs vote for Meira Kumar only.

A party insider said that the MLAs could go against the party and vote for NDA candidate and there is no way of identifying the cross voter as the voting will be done through secret ballots. It can only be confirmed after the results if and MLA has gone against, but identifying the MLA will still be a difficult task. BJP has three MLAs in Bengal and three Gorkha Janamukti Morcha (GJM) MLAs would also vote for the BJP. Kovind is supposed to get six votes from Bengal and if it is found that they have got more than six votes, only then it can be said that cross-voting was done.