Two Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs in Tripura on Monday resigned from their posts after they had differences with Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb, The Hindu reported.
Sudip Roy Barman and Ashish Saha are the MLAs who have sent their resignations to Speaker Ratan Chakraborty.
Roy Barman said that he and Saha will go to Delhi later in the day and decide on the future course of action. Reports, however, speculated that they may join the Congress on Tuesday.
“We will be back in Tripura on February 12,” Saha said. “We have also sent letters to BJP state president Manik Saha, resigning from the primary membership of the party.”
Meanwhile, former Bharatiya Janata Party leader Ashish Das has also resigned as an MLA. He had left the BJP on October 5.
At the time, he had shaved his head and offered prayers at Kolkata’s Kalighat temple as a mark of penance for the “misdeeds” of the saffron party.
With the resignations, the BJP now has 33 members in the 60-member Tripura Assembly.
This is not the first time that BJP MLAs have expressed opposition to Deb’s functioning as the chief minister. In October 2020, nine BJP legislators from the state met the party leadership in Delhi to complain about Deb’s “misrule”.
Barman had led the group, which also included Saha.
“Neither the government nor the party is moving in the right format, as it should be,” one of the MLAs, Sushanta Choudhury, had said. “All the pre-poll promises, mentioned in the party’s vision document, are made to be fulfilled. These should be reflected in action, but we are far away from reality.”
The BJP and its ally the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura had registered a landmark victory in the state in 2018, dislodging the 25-year-old Left Front government. The BJP had won 36 seats, while the IPFT had won eight seats.
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