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Friday, Jul 20, 2007
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Trinamool abstains from voting

Special Correspondent

Party’s ‘inconsistencies’ criticised

KOLKATA: But for a suspended MLA the Trinamool Congress, West Bengal’s major Opposition party, abstained from voting in the Presidential election held on Thursday. In all 260 members of the State Assembly and two MPs from the State exercised their franchise here.

The total number of seats in the State Assembly is 294. With the death of one of its members on Wednesday the Left Front strength in the House is 234. The number of those belonging to the Left Front to have voted in the election here was 233, one of its MLAs, presently hospitalised in New Delhi, being expected to cast his vote there.

The United Progressive Alliance-Left candidate Pratibha Patil is expected to be winning an overwhelming number of votes in the State. It should not be surprising if her opponent, the National Democratic Alliance-backed Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, draws a blank unless there is the unlikely cross-voting, political observers here believe.

The suspended MLA, Sadhan Pande, claimed he had received no whip from the party leadership to abstain and criticised it for its “inconsistencies.” “I will act as a bridge between the Trinamool Congress and the Congress and Mamata Banerjee will have to accept this [in the future],” he said. On Mr. Pande’s participation in the election of Leader of the Opposition, Partha Chatterjee said his party was “not bothered who votes for whom.”

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