As many as 12 MPs out of Trinamool Congress's 19 were ready to vote against the diktat of their leader Mamata Banerjee.
There were many reasons behind Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee's climb-down as reported in rediff.com, but she took the final decision to support Pranab Mukherjee when she came to know that six Trinamool Congress Members of Parliament held a secret meeting with the Presidential candidate on July 16.
According to a source, who was closely associated with the exercise, around 12 MPs out of Trinamool's 19, were itching to vote against the diktat of Mamata Banerjee.
The source also claims that around 65 out of 184 MLAs were supporting Pranab Mukherjee and wanted to vote for him.
Rediff.com tried to contact the MPs who went to see Mukherjee, but could not get their reaction.
It is well-known that Trinamool MPs like Somen Mitra, Sisir Adhikari and Suvendu Adhikari have been praying that their leader Mamata Banerjee take a pragmatic approach in the Presidential election.
Mitra is a former Congress man and former president of the West Bengal Congress. He joined Trinamool after Congress's debacle in West Bengal in 1998.
Leaders like him realised that as MPs from Bengal if they vote against a Bengali babu it would be difficult for them to explain their vote to the linguistically chauvinistic constituency that voted them to power.
Some members of the Trinamool Congress were in a mood to rebel and were ready for "cross-voting" which alarmed Mamata Banerjee to cut the losses and declare that her party would vote for Pranab Mukherjee.
