Mamata Banerjee is fielding three women and Md Nadimul Haque as Rajya Sabha members from Bengal

Journalist Sagarika Ghose 'surprise'

Meghdeep Bhattacharyya, TT, Calcutta, 12.02.24 : Sagarika Ghose; Sushmita Dev; Mamata Bala Thakur; Md Nadimul Haque: Sourced by the Telegraph

Mamata Banerjee is fielding three women — journalist Sagarika Ghose, Matua leader Mamata Bala Thakur and Northeast leader Sushmita Dev — and author-journalist Md Nadimul Haque from Trinamul as Rajya Sabha members for the four Upper House vacancies from Bengal to be filled later this month.

For the fifth vacancy — that of the Congress’s Abhishek Manu Singhvi, who had won with Trinamul backing — which is likely to be filled by a BJP candidate, the saffron camp announced the name of Samik Bhattacharya, the party’s chief spokesperson for Bengal.

In a list of candidates announced by Trinamul on X in the afternoon, Mamata nominated well-known journalist, author and civil society member Ghose, the party’s principal face in the Northeast and former Rajya Sabha member Dev, and prominent Matua leader and former Bongaon MP Thakur, besides journalist, author and two-term Rajya Sabha member Haque.

“The choice of candidates clearly suggests they were handpicked by her (Mamata), although the list was finalised after a discussion with her nephew and party MP and national general secretary (Abhishek Banerjee),” said a Trinamul insider.

He said Ghose was the only real surprise, even within some sections within the party.

From Ghose’s show Question Time Didi, an audience-based interaction in 2013 with Mamata and students, the chief minister had infamously stormed out, after being asked uncomfortable questions by a girl then studying at Presidency University. The Trinamul chief’s on-camera accusation of the student being a Maoist, because of her questions on the criminalisation of politics, had been widely criticised.

Ghose, 59, has been a journalist since 1991, and was a primetime anchor for the BBC World on Question Time India. She is an author of biographies of Indira Gandhi and Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

A student of History who won a Rhodes Scholarship, she studied at St Stephen’s College, Delhi, and the Oxford University’s Magdalen College and St Antony’s College. The daughter of retired IAS officer Bhaskar Ghose, a former director-general of Doordarshan, she is married to journalist-author Rajdeep Sardesai.

“It is no secret that Rajdeep and Sagarika have been very close to Didi (Mamata) for years. They visit her in Calcutta and Delhi…. But nobody here knew either was mulling a career in politics,” said a Trinamul leader.

With the three women, the number of Trinamul’s women MPs in the Rajya Sabha would jump to five from two, out of its 13 Upper House members. In the Lok Sabha, Trinamul has eight women in its total of 22 MPs, excluding the recently expelled Krishnagar MP Mahua Moitra.

“The chief minister struck a deft balance, ensuring better representation of not only key sections of the Bengal electorate but also the northeast, where the party aspires to grow. She also ensured that in Ghose and Dev, Trinamul would have in the Parliament two powerful, anti-BJP voices that are women,” he said, underscoring Mamata’s unwavering focus on empowering and wooing women.

Dev expressed her gratitude to Mamata.

“She has given me a chance to go to the Rajya Sabha again…. Mamatadidi has proven how much she supports women’s empowerment,” Dev said. “I don’t think many women from the northeastern states… have got the chance to reach Rajya Sabha twice.”

Another Trinamul MP saw “cleverness” in the candidatures of Thakur and Haque.

“The Matua leader, in the form of Mamata Bala, and the Muslim author-journalist-intellectual, in the form of Nadimul, are good, sensible choices,” he said, referring to two crucial communities in the Bengal electorate.

The three outgoing members denied re-nomination are the party’s Diamond Harbour-Jadavpur organisational district unit chief Subhasish Chakraborty, Ranaghat’s Scheduled Caste face Abir Ranjan Biswas, and north Calcutta physician Santanu Sen.

“They were deemed to have, somewhat, underperformed in Parliament,” said a Trinamul MP.