Voting for five Rajya Sabha seats in West Bengal ends

Voting for the five Rajya Sabha seats in West Bengal ended at 4 pm today and all the six candidates in the fray were present in the Assembly premises during the polling.

The voting had begun at 9 am.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, state Parliamentary Affairs Minister Partha Chatterjee along with other ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) MLAs, cast their votes. Leader of Opposition Abdul Mannan along with other Congress MLAs also exercised their franchise.

Later, Congress candidate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, who has been supported by the ruling TMC met Banerjee in the Assembly.

The TMC, which fielded four candidates -- Nadimul Haque, who was renominated, Subhasish Chakraborty, Abir Biswas and Santunu Sen -- had announced its support to Singhvi for the fifth seat.

Senior CPI(M) leader Rabin Deb contested as the Left Front candidate for the fifth seat.

A candidate requires 49 first-preference votes to win a Rajya Sabha seat from the state.

In the Assembly, TMC has 211 MLAs and the Congress has 42 members. The Left Front had 32 legislators, but two of them joined the TMC.

Election to the five Rajya Sabha seats from the state was necessitated as the terms of Kunal Ghosh, Bibek Gupta and Nadimul Haque of the TMC and Tapan Sen of CPI(M) will end on April 2.

Mukul Roy, who quit the TMC and joined the BJP last year, has already resigned from the Rajya Sabha.