Sudip Roy Barman and Ashish Saha on Tuesday joined the Congress a day after resigning as Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs in the Tripura Assembly.
All India Congress Committee in-charge Ajoy Kumar said in a tweet that Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra were present when the dissident leaders joined the party.
On Monday, Roy Barman and Saha had submitted their resignation letters to the Tripura Assembly Speaker Ratan Chakraborty. They had also resigned as BJP members.
On Wednesday, Roy Barman claimed that more BJP MLAs will quit the party and the Biplab Deb-led government will lose majority in the Assembly.
Meanwhile, Kumar said that Roy Barman and Saha’s move was just a trailer. “More leaders and MLAs from the Trinamool Congress, Communist Party of India (Marxist) and BJP will join the Congress soon,” he added.
Former BJP leader Ashish Das also resigned as an MLA earlier this week. He had left the BJP on October 5. With the resignations, the BJP now has 33 members in the 60-member Tripura Assembly, while its ally, the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura has eight members.
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”.
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