Kolkata, July 16 (IANS) Actress-turned-politician and Trinamool leader, Rukmini Mallick, popularly known as Koel Mallick, has resigned from the Rajya Sabha, just three months after being elected to the Upper House.
She is the fourth Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha member to resign since June this year, after the results of the recently concluded West Bengal elections were declared, which marked the landslide defeat of the Trinamool Congress.
Earlier, Sukhendu Sekhar Roy, Sushmita Dev and Prakash Chik Baraik resigned from the Upper House one after another. However, all three joined the BJP and have been nominated as BJP candidates for the bypolls scheduled later this month for the three seats vacated by them.
Now speculations are rife in the political circles of West Bengal that Mallick is probably heading for the same formula, as immediately after tendering her resignation to the Rajya Sabha chairperson and Vice-President C.P. Radhakrishnan, she was spotted at the residence of the Union Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Bhupendra Yadav.
It is learnt that Mallick had earlier sent her resignation letter to Radhakrishnan by email. But as per the rules, to resign from the Rajya Sabha, an MP has to appear in person. Accordingly, she appeared in person on Thursday afternoon and submitted her resignation letter to the Rajya Sabha Chairperson.
In February this year, when the Trinamool Congress announced the names of four candidates for the Rajya Sabha, there was total surprise over the selection of candidates. Besides Malick, the other three candidates were former Director General of West Bengal Police Rajeev Kumar, singer-turned-politician and former minister in the Narendra Modi-led Union Cabinet Babul Supriyo and the Supreme Court Senior Advocate Dr Menaka Guruswamy.
All four of them were elected unopposed. However, Mallick did not attend a single session of the Rajya Sabha. Instead, she spent more time in West Bengal campaigning for the Trinamool Congress candidates in the recently concluded elections.
Mallick’s father, Ranjit Mallick, was also an acclaimed actor from the Bengali silver screen world of his time.
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(Written with inputs from IANS)
