Actor Rukmini Mallick, better known as Koel Mallick, was nominated on Sunday by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as its Upper House candidate from Bengal for the October 16 by-election to the seat she resigned from in July as a member of the Mamata Banerjee-led All India Trinamool Congress (TMC).
With the BJP controlling 208 of Bengal’s 294 assembly seats, Mallick’s victory appears certain. Earlier, three other TMC Rajya Sabha members—Sukhendu Sekhar Roy, Sushmita Dev and Prakash Chik Baraik—resigned in June, joined the BJP and won those seats again in the July 24 by-polls. The party also named Dinesh Arya as its Rajya Sabha candidate for the Uttarakhand bypoll to be held on the same day. Mallick resigned from the Upper House exactly four months after the TMC elected her as a candidate in March this year. She did not attend any session during her tenure. With her exit, the Mamata-led TMC’s strength in the Rajya Sabha dropped to nine. These members are Derek O’Brien, Sagarika Ghose, Mohammed Nadimul Haque, Dola Sen, Mamata Bala Thakur, Samirul Islam, Babul Supriyo, Rajeev Kumar and Menaka Guruswamy. Neither the actor nor any representative of the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC had commented on the development to the media by the time of publication.
The BJP named Rukmini Mallick in a statement issued by its central election committee from Delhi on Sunday afternoon.
