Six rebel Trinamool MLAs meet, support Ram Nath Kovind

Guwahati: Six rebel Trinamul Congress legislators form Tripura on Thursday met National Democratic Alliance presidential candidate Ram Nath Kovind in Guwahati and extended their support to him.

Earlier, in the day Mr Kovind visited Itanagar and met the legislators and MPs of Arunachal Pradesh.  He is on a two-day election campaign to the Northeast.

For Mr Kovind, at stake are votes of 98 non-BJP MLAs and five non-BJP MPs from the region who are not supporting United Progressive Alliance (UPA) presidential candidate Meira Kumar. The BJP has 141 MLAs and nine MPs in these states.

Tripura state president of Trinamul Congress Ashish Saha, before leaving Agartala for Guwahati, said that their six legislators will meet Mr Kovind in Guwahati and, after discussion, declare their support for him. The TMC legislators are all set to join the BJP, sources close to these legislators told this newspaper.

Indicating that the presidential poll had hastened the split in the TMC, the sources said that the rebels had decided long back to switch over to the BJP. In the 60-member Tripura Assembly, the ruling CPI(M) has 51 MLAs, while the Opposition Congress has two. If the assembly speaker recognises the TMC-BJP merger, the BJP would be represented by at least seven MLAs, barely six months before the Assembly elections.