Mahboob Alam is ML legislature party leader

PATNA: Four-time Balrampur MLA Mahboob Alam was on Tuesday elected CPI (ML) legislature party leader. The party’s five-time MLA from Darauli assembly constituency, Satyadeo Ram, and Karakat MLA Arun Singh were elected deputy leader and chief whip of the party in the assembly, respectively.

A decision in this regard was taken at a meeting of the CPI (ML)’s 12 elected MLAs here. Earlier, the party’s state executive committee had also held its meeting to discuss the present situation prevailing in the state.

Among those who attended the legislature party meeting were the party’s general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya, state secretary Kunal and other functionaries like Rameshwar Prasad, Rajaram Singh, Dhirendra Kumar Jha, K D Yadav, Meena Tiwari and seven candidates who had unsuccessfully contested the assembly elections.

“Our party’s victory in the polls was the victory of popular movements that we conducted on various issues in the state,” Bhattacharya said.

Bhattacharya also criticised CM Nitish Kumar for making Mewalal Choudhary the state’s education minister as the latter had been earlier implicated in a scam and was even removed from the JD(U). He demanded Choudhary’s dismissal from the council of ministers.