Cong attends first session of 10th Tripura Assembly without leader

Agartala, Mar 17 (UNI) Opposition legislative members attended the first session of the newly-formed 10th Tripura Assembly today without their leader, as the Congress failed to fill that post.

The Congress Legislature Party (CLP) held a meeting soon after oath-taking ceremony on Friday last but could not elect their leader due to factional squabbles among the leaders. The newly-elected MLAs had passed the ball to the Congress High Command to elect leader of CLP.

Party sources here said former chief minister Sudhir Ranjan Majumdar, Birajit Sinha and Ratan Lal Nath were all contesting for the post but none of them were able to win the majority support.

This resulted in the appearance of an unorganised Opposition on the first day of the assembly session.

Meanwhile, the legislators today elected Ramendra Chandra Debnath as Speaker and Bhanu Lal Saha as Deputy Speaker of the tenth assembly without any contest and the session would formally start this afternoon with the address of Governor D N Sahaya.

The 60-member 10th Tripura Assembly comprised 46 legislators of the CPI (M), two of RSP, one each from CPI and Opposition INPT and 10 Congress.

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