Agartala, March 20: The Tripura Governor left the House without completing his inaugural address today as noisy protests from the Opposition marred the opening session of the Assembly.

The second part of the opening day’s session began with Governor Lt. Gen. (retd) Krishna Mohan Seth ceremonially stepping into the House, but trouble started soon after he started reading out his speech.

Former chief minister and veteran Congress legislator Samir Ranjan Barman pointed out that an armed officer of the special branch of the state police had entered the House with the Governor.

“No officer or employee of the police can enter the House with arms and the Governor should know it,” he said. The officer left the House immediately.

But soon after the Governor started reading out the paragraph on the issue of terrorism and the problems created by foreign-backed terrorist groups in Tripura, Congress MLA Gopal Roy started gesticulating that the Governor was parroting only the “political statement” of the state government and that his speech contained nothing against the “terror and violence perpetrated by the CPM on workers and supporters of the Congress-INPT after February 26 Assembly election”.

Roy was soon joined by other party MLAs — Dipak Roy, Sudip Roy-Barman, Ratanlal Nath and senior INPT MLA Nagendra Jamatya —who pointed out that the speech did not refer to the post-poll violence in the state.

The Governor deviated from his speech twice to ask the Opposition members to listen, but finally gave up and left the House, telling the Speaker to deem his speech completed.

In his speech, Gen. Seth strongly condemned the terrorist outfits for indulging in senseless violence, abduction and extortion and for creating obstacles in the way of development. He said the terrorist outfits of Tripura had at least 50 camps in Bangladesh and were operating from across the border in collusion with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence and al Qaida militants.

On the issue of US attack on Iraq, the Governor said: “Such a war is against all international laws and a brazen violation of the sovereignty of another country”.

The Governor also opposed the Centre’s economic policy marked by “privatisation, liberalisation and globalisation” and pointed out its pitfalls.