The Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Friday announced the candidature of former DGP Rajeev Kumar, state Minister Babul Supriyo, Supreme Court Senior Advocate Menaka Guruswamy, and actress Koel Mallick for the coming Rajya Sabha elections.
Polling for 37 Rajya Sabha seats in multiple states will be held on March 16. Five seats from West Bengal are up for grabs, with the TMC set to win four seats and the BJP one.
TMC insiders said the choice of Kumar, a controversial figure for whom Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee once sat on a dharna, was surprising. He retired as the DGP on January 31. Party leaders said Kumar’s nomination shows that the CM continues to stand by former IPS officers who display loyalty and sends out a message to other administrative officials ahead of the Assembly elections.
Supriyo, once a Union MoS in the Narendra Modi government, will once again return to Delhi politics and, as a result, his Ballygunge seat will see the party field a fresh candidate in the Assembly polls.
TMC leaders said Banerjee and the party leadership wanted Guruswamy, known for her role in the landmark legal victory that led the court to strike down Section 377, leading to the decriminalisation of homosexuality, as they wanted a strong voice in the Rajya Sabha against the BJP.
Apart from Rajeev Kumar, some TMC insiders said they were also surprised by the candidature of Koel Mallick, a well-known actress in the Bengali film industry and the daughter of actor Ranjit Mallick. With her candidature, the party continues the tradition of bringing faces from the film industry to Parliament.
While the terms of TMC’s Subrata Bakshi, Ritabrata Banerjee, and Saket Gokhale and CPI(M) leader Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya will end on April 2, the fifth seat fell vacant following the resignation of Mausam Benazir Noor last month. Noor rejoined the Congress after quitting the Mamata-led party.
“Fifty per cent of Trinamool’s nominees for the Rajya Sabha are non-Bengalis. Couldn’t Mamata Banerjee find enough Bengalis to nominate? Or is she obliging those who hold her dirty secrets and are willing accomplices in her crime and corruption syndicate? It is as if she despises Bengalis and uses them merely to garner votes. This completely exposes her pro-Bengal pitch. If anything, she has continuously harmed the interests of West Bengal and Bengalis,” Bengal BJP posted on X.
Hitting out at the ruling party, former CPI(M) MP Sujan Chakraborty posted on X, Just as the BJP has Ranjan Gogoi, the Trinamool has Rajeev Kumar. Not the state’s, not the administration’s, Rajeev Kumar stands in Trinamool’s colours. The terrifying extent of political brokerage within the judiciary and administrative functioning is becoming increasingly evident. In the game of destroying the Constitution’s core spirit, both the BJP and the Trinamool seem equally adept.”
Rajeev Kumar (Former DGP)
The former DGP and Kolkata Police Commissioner was not always seen as someone who did the CM’s bidding. In fact, when Mamata became the CM, she is said to have had reservations about Kumar.
However, all that changed soon afterwards and when the Saradha chit fund scam became public in 2013, he headed the Special Task Force (STF) that investigated the case, arresting the main accused, Sudipto Sen and two of his associates. Just a month later, the Supreme Court transferred all cases related to the scam to the CBI.
By the time the 2106 Assembly elections rolled in, the Opposition accused Kumar, then the Kolkata Police chief, of acting on the ruling party’s behest and tapping the phones of its leaders. Three years later, they again reiterated the accusations.
Kumar again hit the headlines in February 2019, when months before the Lok Sabha elections, the CBI searched his home in connection with its probe into the Saradha case. In an unprecedented move and showing how important she was to the government, Mamata Banerjee sat on a dharna at Kolkata’s Esplanade. After about 70-odd hours, Banerjee ended her sit-in when the Supreme Court directed that no coercive steps, including arrest, be taken against Kumar. The court also ordered the then Kolkata top cop to cooperate with the agency.
A retired police officer said Kumar had “played a major role in sharing inputs on anti-terrorism cells”.
“His skill in electronic surveillance was known by investigative agencies throughout the country,” the officer said. “During his stint in Kolkata Police STF, he was instrumental in nabbing terrorists and busting fake currency rackets. He had a major role to play in the arrest of accused persons, including Aftab Ansari who was the mastermind of high-profile cases like the American Centre attack (2002) and the Khadim owner’s abduction (2001),” the officer said. Senior police officers said Kumar also played a crucial role in anti-Maoist operations in the state.
Last week, it emerged that Kumar had sent a defamation notice to Union Minister and former state BJP president Sukanta Majumdar over his comments accusing him of involvement in several scams. On Kumar’s candidature, Majumdar said, “It is up to the TMC to choose its Rajya Sabha candidate. But the TMC is not sending party leaders to the Rajya Sabha. They are also sending outsiders … Sending Rajeev Kumar shows that he is being awarded for the role he played during the Saradha chit fund scam enquiry.”
Babul Supriyo (West Bengal minister)
An established playback singer in the Hindi film industry, Supriyo joined the BJP ahead of the 2014 general elections and won from the Asansol Lok Sabha constituency. He was seen as one of the BJP’s rising stars in Bengal and went on to join the Union Ministry, where he served as MoS for Urban Development, Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation and later, as MoS for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises.
Supriyo retained Asansol in 2019 again, but with the BJP sensing an opportunity in the 2021 Assembly elections, he was fielded from Tollygunj against the TMC’s Aroop Biswas. He lost the election by more than 50,000 votes. The distance between him and the BJP grew when Supriyo was dropped from the Union Ministry. Soon afterwards, in September 2021, he joined the TMC and was elected to the Assembly in April 2022 from Ballygunge in Kolkata.
Menaka Guruswamy (Senior Advocate, Supreme Court)
Guruswamy has been involved in several landmark cases over the years, among them the verdict striking down Section 377, as well as the bureaucratic reforms, AgustaWestland bribery, Salwa Judum, and Right to Education cases.
Along with Kapil Sibal, she represented the West Bengal government in the R G Kar case in the Supreme Court and was also the TMC’s counsel in the Calcutta High Court following the face-off between Mamata Banerjee and the Enforcement Direcotrate following the central agency’s raids at the office of political consultancy firm I-PAC and the home of its chief Pratik Jain in Kolkata last month.
Koel Mallick
A popular actress in mainstream Bengali movies, Mallick has received several awards, including a Filmfare Awards Bangla, two BFJA Awards, and an Anandalok Puraskar. In 2023, the state government honoured her with the Mahanayak Samman.