In­cum­bent Cou­va South Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Rudranath In­dars­ingh says he had no clue that he would not have been se­lect­ed by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) to seek re-elec­tion for a fourth term. How­ev­er, he says he re­mains loy­al to the par­ty.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view al­most 24 hours af­ter the de­ci­sion to re­place him with in­cum­bent Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath was an­nounced by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bissses­sar at Eid cel­e­bra­tions in Princes Town on Mon­day, In­dars­ingh said that he al­ways ac­cept­ed the out­come as a pos­si­bil­i­ty when he put him­self for­ward to be screened by the par­ty af­ter serv­ing as MP for three con­sec­u­tive terms since 2010.

In­dars­ingh said: “When I got in­to elec­toral pol­i­tics, I un­der­stood that with the screen­ing and al­lo­ca­tion of seats you put your­self be­fore the po­lit­i­cal leader and the screen­ing com­mit­tee and ul­ti­mate­ly the de­ci­sions are left to them to make the al­lo­ca­tion or as­sign­ments of seats.”