Mamata Banerjee sets sights on Tripura, says former speaker Jiten Sarkar wants to join TMC

Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee said on Wednesday that former speaker of the Tripura Assembly, Jiten Sarkar, wrote to her expressing his desire of joining TMC. “Former Tripura Speaker Jiten Sarkar has sent me a letter saying he et al. want to hitch TMC,” ANI said quoting Banerjee.

The Bengal chief minister, who has been trying to form in-roads within the northeastern state, after her resounding victory within the Assembly elections in Bengal earlier this year, expressed confidence in her party’s ability to win Tripura. “We will win Tripura next,” she told ANI.

Sarkar, a veteran politician, left the Congress in 2016 to rejoin Communist Party of India (Marxist), the party he deserted in 2008. He would be the second status political figure to hitch TMC, following within the footsteps of Sushmita Dev, who left Congress to hitch Trinamool within the presence of senior party leaders Abhishek Banerjee and Derek O’Brien in Kolkata on August 16.

Dev, a former Member of Parliament (MP) and chief of the All India Mahila Congress, sent her resignation letter to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi but offered no reason for it. “I have an extended relationship with the Congress and that i have written everything that in my resignation letter. I got many opportunities in Congress and that i tried to try to to justice to all or any the responsibilities. many of us tried to call me, but i used to be not available. On Assumption , I gave the Congress president my resignation,” she told reporters in Kolkata.

Eyeing the upcoming Tripura polls TMC leader and Banerjee’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee has constituted a team of senior leaders who are going to be camping within the northeastern state monthly . This newly formed team comprises all veteran TMC leaders like Bratya Basu, Moloy Ghatak, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, Ritabrata Banerjee, former legislator Samir Chakraborty, and party spokesperson Kunal Ghosh.

“TMC leaders are going to be camping in Tripura to assist the party expand its base before the elections. Abhishek Banerjee himself visited Tripura earlier in the week . this may help boost the party’s grassroot level infrastructure and allow them to know that senior party leaders are standing beside them,” a TMC leader told Hindustan Times. Banerjee herself promised to implement welfare schemes of the West Bengal government in Tripura. “We want Bengal’s schemes to be implemented in Tripura,” she said on Wednesday.