Six Trinamool Congress MLAs, who joined BJP in August this year today formally handed over a letter to the Speaker of Tripura Assembly, Ramendra Chandra Debnath to officially recognise them as BJP MLAs.
The six legislators - Diba Chandra Hramkhawl, Sudip Roy Barman, Asish Saha, Pranjit Singha Roy, Dilip Sarkar and Biswa Bandhu Sen met the Speaker and said they have snapped all relations with TMC and joined the BJP.
The six MLAs told reporters that veteran tribal leader, Diba Chandra Hrankhawl would the leader of the BJP Legislature Party in the assembly and a separate letter in this connection would be submitted to the Speaker soon.
The Speaker said, "There are many official formalities to recognise them as BJP MLAs and the secretary of the assembly is also out of station now. The next session of the assembly would start next week. If all formalities were not fulfilled and if the Treasury bench want to know about them I would show the letter to them and tell that they joined BJP".
The six legislators were originally elected to the Tripura assembly in 2013 on Congress party tickets. They joined the Trinamool Congress in June 2016.
At present the ruling Left Front has 51 MLAs in the 60-member Assembly, Congress three and BJP six.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)