BJP, for reasons best known to them, made five of their party parliamentarians contest in the recently concluded West Bengal Assembly elections. They were Shri Swapan Dasgupta, a nominated member to the Rajya Sabha, Asansol MP Shri Babul Supriyo, a Central minister, Cooch Behar MP, Nitis Pramanik, Hooghly MP Locket Chatterjee and Ranaghat MP, Jagannath Sarkar.
Swapan Dasgupta was not an elected member but was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in the special category and had to forsake his parliamentary seat before choosing to contest the Tarakaswar seat. All the others were elected to Parliament in 2019.
Save Nitis Pramanik and Jagannath Sarkar, the rest Members of Parliament lost the Assembly elections. The MLAs cannot retain both their parliamentary and Assembly seats and had to concede one. As anticipated, both Pramanik and Sarkar resigned their post as MLAs, reducing the strength of the BJP MLAs from 77 to 75 in the State Assembly.
BJP, I had thought, is a principled party, appearing to be morally righteous, irrespective of the complexities and loopholes provided by laws:
- Making the MPs contest was a bad idea.
- Those MPs who had lost the Assembly elections must have resigned from their Parliament seat on moral grounds.
- The winning MPs must have retained their MLA seats and opted out of the Parliament.
If the party had won a majority, what would these MPs, Pramanik and Sarkar, have done? They might have joined the State cabinet and resigned from the Parliament. It is a case of having the cake and eat it too and is a mockery of democracy and the constitution. The MPs knew well that the rules do not permit simultaneously retaining the Assembly and parliamentary seat. But is it only law that should be the guiding factor for the lawmakers? Has morality nothing to do with it?
I would have wished both Nitis Pramanik and Jagannath Sarkar stayed back and worked harder for the State’s welfare as MLAs.
A losing candidate becoming a CM may not be an analogy to justify the action of the MPs if the BJP claims that they are different and better as a political party.
Sampath Kumar
Intrépide Voix
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