Tripura to witness heavy cross voting in presidential election

From A correspondent

Agartala, July 3: Tripura is going to witness heavy cross voting as six Trimool Congress MLAs and a Congress MLA is all set to vote in favor of BJP led tiol Democratic Alliance candidate Ramth Kobind in the Presidential election scheduled to be held on July 17. The decision of the TMC MLA's is a clear violation of the party supremo Mamata Banerjee's stand who has aligned with the Congress led opposition alliance and decided to vote for Meira Kumar.

''We have decided not to vote for any candidate who is being supported by CPI (M) as we are fighting to oust them," Sudip Roy Barman, leader of the TMC group, told the reporters.  The decision was taken in a meeting attended by five MLA's, as an MLA Dilip Sarkar, is out of station at the moment for treatment purpose. However, he has given his consent to abide by the decision taken by his colleagues.

Apart from Roy Barman and Sarkar, four other MLA's are TMC state president Ashish Kumar Saha, Diba Chandra Hrangkhawal, Biswa Bandhu Sen and Prajit Singha Roy.

The meeting was held following a phone conversation with the BJP's tiol general secretary Ram Madhab requesting the TMC MLA's to vote in favor of Ramth Kobind.   

One of the three Congress MLA's Ratan Lal th is also set to vote in favor of NDA candidate. Though technically he is still in Congress but he is candidly maintaining bonhomie with the BJP. The Congress has already issued a show cause notice to him for violating party's protocol which he is yet to response. The Tripura Pradesh Congress president Birajit Sinha in a press conference on Monday said it would be 'unethical' if senior MLA Ratan Lal th vote in favor of Kobind as the Congress has its own candidate.