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Agartala, Sept. 21: The two-day concluding session of the 8th Tripura legislative Assembly began here today on a stormy note with the Opposition Congress and its ally, the Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT), forcing a long adjournment and boycotting the day’s proceedings.
They charged the treasury bench with protecting tainted RSP MLA Partha Das on the fake SC certificate issue and failure to give jobs to youths despite having 40,000 vacant posts in the administration.
As usual, the session commenced with a one-hour question-answer session, which passed off peacefully. However, at the commencement of zero hour at 12pm, Opposition leader Ratanlal Nath stood up to know the fate of his adjournment motion over RSP MLA Partha Das, whose fake SC certificate had been declared null and void by the state-level monitoring committee as well as by the SC department of the government.
The Opposition also pointed out the state government’s failure to give employment despite having vacant posts but Speaker Ramendra Debnath announced that he had rejected the adjournment motion on procedural grounds, citing relevant provisions in the rules of procedure and conduct of business.
The Speaker’s announcement, however, added fuel to fire as the entire Opposition invaded the well of the House and started sloganeering. A mute witness to what was happening, the Speaker adjourned the House till 2pm. The Opposition did not take part in the second part of the day’s session.
Two political murders last night in Sipahijala and South Tripura districts of the state have emerged as a major issue in the run-up to the Assembly polls. Police sources said around 8 last night, Manoranjan Das, 40, a local Congress worker, was called out of his house and brutally hacked to death in Purba Nalchhar under Sonamura subdivsion. In another incident, Moni Tripura, 36, a local Congress leader in Amlighat under Sabroom subdivision of South Tripura, was clubbed to death around 10pm while returning home from the local Congress office.
Describing both the murders as “politically motivated”, state PCC president Sudip Roy Barman said the CPM was slowly but steadily unleashing political violence to keep Congress workers confined to their homes till the polls.
In another development earlier, the state Congress and its longstanding ally INPT clinched a seat-sharing deal after INPT president and MLA Bijay Kumar Hrangkhawal and PCC president Roy Barman held a lengthy meeting at the latter’s official residence in MLA Hostel No.1. Both the leaders, however, refused to divulge the details.
Sources in the Congress, who were privy to the meeting, said the understanding reached was that the parties would equally share the 20 seats reserved for indigenous people.Roy Barman justified the alliance with the INPT, describing it as “merely a seat-sharing arrangement to prevent division of anti-Left votes”. He said erosion of support for the Congress among indigenous people in the past had provided the political space for emergence of regional forces and the party had reached an electoral understanding with the erstwhile TUJS, forerunner of the INPT, before the 1983 Assembly polls.
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