The fate of the fifth Rajya Sabha seat from Bengal was all but sealed on Monday as the Congress high-command cleared the candidature of CPM leader and former Calcutta mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya.

Each Rajya Sabha seat in Bengal is won on the basis of 49 first-preference votes in the 294-seat Assembly. With 230-plus MLAs, Trinamul is sure to win four of the five seats.

The Left and the Congress, despite losing 26 MLAs to Trinamul and the BJP through defections since 2016, still have a combined strength of 51 and Bhattacharyya is expected to sail through in the absence of cross-voting.

“I’ve been asked by the party to file the nomination for the Upper House. I hope Congress supports my nomination,” said Bhattacharyya on Monday.

Congress state unit sources said the central leadership had on Monday cleared the proposal to back a CPM candidate for the Bengal vacancy, even if it is not Sitaram Yechury. The path to the Rajya Sabha for the CPM general-secretary, a former two-term member, was blocked yet again — according to insiders -— by an influential section in the party.

For Bhattacharyya, this will be second time lucky, as his candidature in 2017 was rejected by the Election Commission over an alleged two-minute delay past the 3pm deadline on the last date of filing nominations.

Then, besides four from Trinamul, Congress’s Pradip Bhattacharya made it to the Rajya Sabha with Mamata Banerjee’s blessings.

A year later, Mamata backed the Congress’s Abhishek Manu Singhvi’s candidature, enabling him to be sent to the Rajya Sabha from Bengal.

“We did not want to allow Mamata to offer support to us a third time, thereby throwing a spanner in the works for our truck with the Left ahead of the civic and Assembly polls,” said a Congress state leader.

BJP national-secretary Rahul Sinha said: “With Bhattacharyya now added to the list, four of the five Rajya Sabha members will be candidates rejected by the people in the Lok Sabha polls…. Such a sorry state of affairs for Bengal.”