GUWAHATI: The BJP, which rules Tripura, suffered yet another blow on Wednesday when its Karamchara MLA Diba Chandra Hrangkhawl resigned from the Assembly as well as the party.
He is the fifth BJP legislator to have ditched the party and eighth overall of the BJP-Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT) coalition. The state is expected to go to elections in February.
Hrangkhawl, 67, is a tribal leader and four-time MLA who was first elected in 1988. He told reporters he had resigned from the Assembly and the party on personal grounds. “I will soon decide my future course of action,” he said.
Congress sources later said he would join the party at a programme in state capital Agartala on Thursday. He has a Congress past. Hrangkhawl was reportedly livid that the BJP leadership did not consider him for ministership or any other important responsibility.
Some Congress leaders, including Ashish Kumar Saha, accompanied Hrangkhawl when he went to submit his resignation to Assembly secretary Bishnu Pada Karmakar in the absence of Speaker Ratan Chakraborty.