TRIPURA: MANIK SARKAR VACATES GOVERNMENT BUNGALOW

Manik Sarkar, the outgoing Tripura Chief Minister, who has always led a simple life, has vacated the Chief Minister’s official residence and moved into CPM party office with his wife Panchali Bhattacharjee. The Left veteran doesn't own a house and had donated his ancestral property to his sister. Sarkar, who ruled Tripura for 20 years, preferred not to stay at the MLAs hostel and instead moved in to a two-room flat above the CPM party office in Dasarath Deb Smriti Bhavan, the party headquarters.

It may be mentioned that, outgoing Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar submitted his resignation to Governor Tathagata Roy on March 4, a day after the CPI(M)-led Left Front was dethroned by the BJP-IPFT coalition after nearly 25 years in power. The CPI-M politburo member retained his Dhanpur (in western Tripura under Sepahijala district) Assembly constituency for the fifth consecutive time. The Left leader won the Dhanpur seat by a margin of 5,441 votes defeating BJP general secretary and woman leader Pratima Bhowmik in a multi-cornered contest.

The BJP-IPFT combine scripted history by winning the Tripura Assembly polls with a two-thirds majority, ending 25 years of uninterrupted rule of the CPI(M)-led Left Front in Tripura. The BJP and the Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT) won 43 seats and the CPI(M) won 16. Elections were held for the 59 seats of the 60 member Assembly on February 18. Polling was countermanded in one seat due to death of a CPI(M) candidate.