The elections to five Rajya Sabha seats in West Bengal today were marked by cross-voting amid "horse-trading" allegations with a disunited opposition Left Front and Congress paving way for the ruling Trinamool Congress to win four seats and the Left Front one.
Bollywood actor Mithun Chakraborty and eminent painter Jogen Chowdhury were elected Rajya Sabha members on a Trinamool Congress ticket from the state.
Businessman K D Singh, Rajya Sabha MP from Jharkhand who resigned to contest from West Bengal and journalist Ahmed Hasan were the other two Trinamool candidates elected.
Left Front nominee Ritabrata Banerjee, General Secretary of the CPI(M)'s student wing SFI was the other winning candidate.
Left Front and Congress disunity came to the fore as cross voting by five Opposition legislators -- three from the Left and two from the Congress helped the ruling Trinamool Congress to score wins for all its four nominees.
The Congress suspended two rebel legislators, Sushil Roy and Emani Biswas for six years.
Congress-nominated independent candidate A S Malihabadi was defeated.
While Left Front nominee secured 57 votes, the Trinamool candidate Jogen Chowdhury got 50. Mithun Chakraborty and KD Singh were tied at 49 votes and Hasan polled 47 votes.
Congress-backed independent candidate Malihabadi got 37 votes.
The Left which was supposed to support the Congress backed independent nominee, cast all their 57 votes in favour of Ritabrata Banerjee, as their first candidate.
"All the 57 MLAs cast their votes in favour of Ritabrata as their first preference. The extra 8 votes were given to Malihabadi as second preference," said CPI(M) leader Rabin Deb.
