AGARTALA: Four-time Tripura legislator Diba Chandra Hrangkhawl on Wednesday became the fifth sitting MLA to quit BJP since its historic unseating of the then Left Front government in 2018, giving the saffron party more to worry about going into the big poll bout in a few months.
Hrangkhawl, elected from Karanchara in northern Tripura’s Dhalai district on a BJP ticket, said he quit BJP as he was feeling “suffocated” within the party and distressed at seeing the party leadership “losing control over cadres who have unleashed a reign of terror over the past 58 months”.
The MLA didn’t give away his plan but the buzz was that he would return to the Congress fold. Known to be close to BJP-turned-Congress MLA and former minister Sudip Roy Barman, Hrangkhawl said he would “decide my course of action very soon”.
Accompanied by several Congress functionaries, the 66-year-old legislator submitted his resignation to assembly secretary Bishnu Pada Karmakar in speaker Ratan Chakraborty’s absence.
“I expressed my displeasure with the functioning of BJP and suggested several corrective measures a number of times, but those were ignored. Anti-social elements, criminals and frauds have got into BJP. Democracy has been throttled, the liberty of opposition parties and citizens has been destroyed.” The resignation reduced the strength of the BJP-IPFT (Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura) coalition in the 60-member assembly to 35. IPFT has five MLAs and BJ.
Start a Conversation
Post comment