Agartala: On a day Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Mamata Banerjee called for a ‘BJP Quit India’ movement at a mega rally in Kolkata, the saffron party got a huge fillip in Tripura. All six TMC MLAs in the northeastern state on July 21 said they would join BJP very soon.
At a prolonged meeting here, the legislators – all of who voted for NDA nominee Ram Nath Kovind in the July 17 Presidential election – said they would make the big switch with more than a lakh of their supporters in tow. The MLAs – Sudip Roy Barman, Diba Chandra Hrangkhawl, Asish Saha, Biswabandhu Sen, Pranjit Singha Roy and Dillip Sarkar – are yet to be officially expelled from TMC. However, the party’s general secretary Partha Chatterjee said TMC would have no ties with the legislators.
Roy Barman, a senior MLA, said they had held preliminary talks with BJP leaders around two weeks ago and had consequently decided to vote for Kovind. “In the next couple of days, we shall meet Amit Shah in New Delhi to formally join BJP,” he said on July 21.
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