New Delhi: After two years of vacancy, Rajya Sabha members on Wednesday elected Dola Sen in the Employee's State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) panel as a member from the Upper House.
Sen has been a trade union leader of West Bengal for a long time and has been the former state president of the Indian National Trinamool Trade Union Congress (INTTUC).
She has won with 90 votes, whereas Congress member Pradeep Bhattacharya is in the second position with 46 votes, Elamaram Kareem of CPI-M has got eight votes and 12 votes have been counted as invalid due to numbering problem, sources mentioned.
However, TMC has called the development 'un-parliamentary' and questioned over Congress' role by fielding its member in the race. Senior Rajya Sabha member and Trinamool veteran Sukhendu Sekhar Roy challenged it and asserted that the position belongs to the party as former member Debabrata Bandyopadhyay (from TMC) retired on August 2017 and government did not issue any notification since then.
"As per convention in Parliament, elections are never held for these posts (ESIC nomination). Parties mutually decide. But in this time an election was forced upon us. This seat was allotted to Trinamool for many years. It is ridiculous to allege that anyone joined hands for a membership to a Rajya Sabha board," Roy mentioned in his statement.
The panel of ESIC contains with one Rajya Sabha member, one from Lok Sabha, IAS officers, trade union leaders and representatives from associations of business organisations.
The chief whip of TMC in Rajya Sabha further made a scathing attack on both the Congress and the CPI-M for transferring respective votes during the recent Lok Sabha elections to the BJP in West Bengal.
"People are aware how Congress and CPM joined hands with BJP to defeat our candidates in the Lok Sabha elections and to what extent votes CPM and Congress votes shifted to BJP. The allegation made by the defeated Congress candidate is laughable," Roy further claimed.
Two Trinamool members - Nadimul Haque and Subhashis Chakraborty could not cast votes as they are in Kolkata. There was no whip was issued in the Upper House for the election, a TMC source mentioned.