Tripura Assembly Speaker Ratan Chakraborty has initiated action against former BJP MLA Ashis Das who joined the TMC during a rally at Agartala on Sunday.
Tripura Assembly Secretary Bishnu Pada Karmakar said that the Speaker, under the anti-defection law (the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution) would issue a show-cause notice to Das to explain his position.
“The letter being issued to the legislator and after getting his reply, the Speaker, through a legal process, would decide the next course of action against Das,” Karmakar said.
Tripura BJP president Manik Saha said that at the moment, the party would not take any action as he has yet to resign from the party before joining the Trinamool.
“I have learnt that the Speaker would take appropriate steps under the anti-defection law. The party is aware of his (Das) activities,” said Saha.
Das, a Scheduled Caste leader and a BJP MLA from the Surma Assembly seat in northern Tripura, on Monday said that the governance in Tripura is worse than British rule.
In a setback to the BJP, Das along with party’s national executive member from West Bengal Rajib Banerjee on Sunday joined the TMC.
TMC General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee addressed a major rally in Agartala on Sunday.
Das and four other BJP MLAs — Sudip Roy Barman, Ashis Kumar Saha, Diba Chandra Hrangkhawl, and Burba Mohan Tripura – in August held a big gathering in Agartala which was attended by many local BJP leaders and workers.
To plug the rebellion in the organisation and to set the governance right, several central party leaders led by BJP’s North East Zonal Secretary (Organisation), Ajay Jamwal, had rushed to the state several times.
In the presence of the central leaders, three BJP MLAs — Ram Prasad Paul, Sushanta Chowdhury, Bhagaban Chandra Das — were on August 31 inducted into the Tripura cabinet in its first expansion after the BJP-IPFT (Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura) alliance assumed office in March 2018.
The open dissent and internal dispute in the ruling BJP began after Barman, who was holding the Health and Information Technology departments, was sacked from the ministry in May 2019 following differences with the Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb.