Trinamool Congress-backed Congress nominee Abhishek Manu Singhvi and five other candidates on Monday filed their papers for the March 23 Rajya Sabha elections for five seats from West Bengal.
Subhasish Chakraborty, Abir Biswas, Santanu Sen and Nadimul Haque from the Trinamool, and Communist Party of India-Marxist's Rabin Deb were the others to file their nominations at the Assembly during the day, making a contest inevitable in case none of these candidates opts out.
Singhvi's nomination had 40 proposers -- 20 each from the Congress and the Trinamool. After completing the formalities, Singhvi called for preventing any division in the anti-BJP votes in the country in order to "stop the march of divisive forces".
"In the present situation, it is our task to stop the march of divisive forces and the Bharatiya Janata Party in the country. And, for this, we need to ensure there is no division in the anti-BJP votes," he said.
West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee has announced her party support for Singhvi.
Elections to the five upper house seats have been necessitated as the terms of Kunal Ghosh, Vivek Gupta, and Nadimul Haque of the TMC and Tapan Sen of CPI-M will end on April 2.
Mukul Roy, who left the Trinamool last year and joined the BJP, has resigned from the upper house of Parliament.
--IANS
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