Mannan leaves the Assembly on Thursday after withdrawing from the March 30 Rajya Sabha polls

Calcutta, March 22: Lone Congress candidate Abdul Mannan today withdrew his nomination for the Rajya Sabha polls, paving the way for the five nominees to be elected uncontested.

Assembly secretary J.L. Chakraborty announced this afternoon that Mukul Roy, Kunal Ghosh, Nadimul Haque and Vivek Gupta of Trinamul and Tapan Sen of the CPM had been elected to the upper House.

Mannan reached the Assembly around 12.15pm and withdrew his nomination following instructions from AICC’s Bengal-in charge Shakeel Ahmed and state Congress chief Pradip Bhattacharya.

“I had filed my nomination at the behest of my leaders in Delhi. I withdrew it when they instructed me to do so,” Mannan told a media conference at state Congress headquarters Bidhan Bhavan later in the day.

Mannan sidestepped the question if his bosses in Delhi had “surrendered” to Mamata Banerjee to keep her in good humour. “The leadership must have asked me to withdraw my nomination keeping in mind a greater political interest,” he said.

Although Mannan did not elaborate what he meant by “greater political interest”, Shakeel said over the phone from Delhi: “Our alliance with Mamataji in Bengal and at the Centre would have been under severe strain had Mannan contested. This is why we asked him to withdraw. This is what we mean by greater political interest. We will have to stick to our alliance dharma.”

Asked if his withdrawal had demoralised the Congress rank and file, Mannan said the 127-year-old party had made “several sacrifices” since the days of Indira Gandhi.

A Congress worker from Burdwan’s Mangalkot cut Mannan short and demanded to know “how long the party would continue with such abject surrenders to Trinamul?” “How long shall we have to bear such humiliation from our alliance partner?” Khandekar Shah Alam asked.

A visibly embarrassed Mannan tried to reason with him by saying that it was not the forum to vent his ire but Khandekar kept shouting till he was asked to leave the venue.

An AICC leader said the finance bill and the presidential elections had prompted the Congress to ask Mannan to withdraw as Mamata, whose support is important for the two events, had made her displeasure known after the ally fielded a candidate, clouding the prospects of her fourth nominee.

“The lack of requisite number of votes to see Mannan through was also a worry. Had he lost, it would have come as a humiliation for us,” he added.

“We had made it clear that we would not take the Left’s support. In that case, we could not have got more than 43 votes. This would not have been enough to ensure Mannan’s victory.”

State Congress general secretary Amitava Chakraborty, who was among those present at the media conference, later admitted that the party ranks were “indeed disheartened” by Mannan’s withdrawal from the fray.

“But nothing doing. Our primary concern is to keep the alliance afloat, come what may,” he said.