Kolkota: On Thursday, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, a Rajya Sabha candidate for Congress Party from West Bengal, said that the allegations by CPM about the inconsistency in his age mentioned in the affidavits for the nearing RS elections, as malicious and baseless and alleged that they are attempting to remove his name from the candidate list, so that the can avoid their imminent defeat.
Mr Singhvi, who has the support of states ruling Trinamool Congress as a candidate for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections, said that CPM is referring to 2006 age declaration form which had “typographical error” that has no significance in this year of 2018 and this proves that their claim is baseless.
“I would not have dignified their claims with a response because the CPI-M’s allegations are petty to the point of being puerile. They are malicious, baseless, unfounded, defamatory and false,” he told news reporters outside the state assembly.
“They raised a very malicious and false allegation about my age. It is comic because in 2018, today’s election they found nothing wrong with my age. Since the CPM and left knows that they cannot escape defeat, they have stopped fighting like gentlemen and challenged a 2006 declaration with a typographical error, without challenging the documents of 2012 or 2018,” he added.
The politician, instead, alleged that the CPM at that time tried to raise childish objections over his nomination.
“Since they went to the extent of holding a press conference and sending a letter to the Election Commission of India, I am clarifying myself to you. There is a two and half page statement by me on this issue, which can be collected from Leader of Opposition Abdul Mannan. It has all the facts,” Mr Singhvi commented.
“With the cooperation of the Congress party and the supporting party, I have no doubts that the victory would be ours. These silly allegations by the Left are excuses to avoid a certain defeat,” he further claimed.
The CPI-M, on Wednesday, nominated Rabin Deb as the candidate for Rajya Sabha from their side. The party claimed that there was a clear discrepancy in Mr Singhvi’s age which was mentioned in his affidavit filed for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections and the one he filed 12 years back. It further claimed that the forms he had filed were not properly filled and sent a letter to the Election Commission regarding that.
West Bengal has got six candidates for the Rajya Sabha elections for the total five, who are vying to fight and win.
There are four Trinamool candidates apart from Mr Deb and Mr Singhvi. The names of the four are – Nadimul Haque, Subhasish Chakraborty, Abir Biswas and Santanu Sen.