Yashwant Sinha will get enormous lead from Bengal: Trinamool
Kolkata: Voting for Presidential elections was held at the Bengal Legislative Assembly on Monday with 291 legislators, 21 Lok Sabha MPs and 13 Rajya Sabha MPs casting their votes.
Droupadi Murmu is the Presidential nominee of the BJP-led NDA while Yashwant Sinha is the joint nominee of several Opposition parties, including the Trinamool Congress (TMC).
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee reached the Assembly at 2 pm and voted at around 3.30 pm and left soon after. TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee who is also the party MP from Diamond Harbour voted earlier in the afternoon. The Election Commission on Monday said over 99 per cent of the total 4,796 electors cast their votes in the presidential polls, while 10 states and the Union Territory of Puducherry recorded a turnout of 100 per cent.
The election was concluded successfully in a free, fair and transparent manner at the Parliament House and at 30 centres within State Legislative Assemblies across the country including in Delhi and Puducherry, the poll panel said in a statement.
"As per reports being received, out of a total of 771 Members of Parliament entitled to vote (05 vacant) and similarly out of total 4025 Members of the Legislative Assemblies entitled to vote (06 vacant and 02 disqualified), over 99 per cent cast their votes today," the statement said.
A 100 per cent voting by MLAs was reported from Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, the statement reads.
Meanwhile, the TMC lodged a complaint with the Election Commission alleging violation of the Model Code of Conduct by the 69 BJP legislators who came together for voting in the state Assembly on Monday wearing 'uttariya' which is associated with the tribal community.
"They (BJP) have been campaigning claiming that this has been for the first time when somebody from the tribal community will be the President of India. On the very day of the election too, they have used their attire to campaign which is a violation of the Model Code of Conduct," TMC leader Chandrima Bhattacharjee said.
Senior TMC leader and state Transport minister Firhad Hakim said the TMC aims to ensure that the Opposition's Presidential candidate Yashwant Sinha gets a handsome lead from the state.
"The lead that Yashwant Sinha will get would be beyond all calculation. We are sure that even some BJP MLAs will vote for our candidate," Hakim said.
Rubbishing claims made by BJP MLAs that TMC legislators representing the tribal community will vote for Murmu, TMC MLAs like Birbaha Hansda and Jyotsna Mandi maintained that they will not vote for Murmu who had claimed to be a Hindu. "A tribal does not belong to any religion," a TMC Adivasi legislator said.
MLA from Krishnanagar Uttar Mukul Roy who voted at around 4 pm claimed that he had voted for Trinamool Congress' candidate. Roy had joined the TMC but is still officially a legislator of the BJP who recently resigned as the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the Bengal Assembly.
BJP presently has 17 Lok Sabha MPs from Bengal. Of them, Arjun Singh has switched over to TMC but is yet to resign as a parliamentarian.
Five of the 75 saffron party MLAs too have joined TMC without resigning as legislators. The Assembly has 294 seats.
The ruling TMC has 216 MLAs and enjoys the support of five BJP MLAs and one Independent MLA. It has 13 Rajya Sabha and 23 Lok Sabha MPs. TMC MLA from Basirhat Uttar constituency Rafikul Islam Mondal was absent during voting as he has gone on a pilgrimage while Naushad Siddiqui of the Left Front did not turn up for voting. Sadhan Pande, former TMC MLA, passed away in February this year.
Suvendu Adhikari, Leader of Opposition, claimed that Murmu will be sweeping the Presidential elections by bagging 70 per cent votes. The BJP Bengal unit had shifted all its 69 MLAs in the state Assembly to a hotel in the New Town area on Sunday to prevent any cross-voting.
