Agartala, June 3 (IANS) The Trinamool Congress (TMC) will defeat the ruling Left Front in Tripura in the 2018 assembly polls and form the government, party Vice President Mukul Roy said here on Friday after meeting seven disgruntled Congress MLAs.
Roy arrived here on Friday morning as an emissary of TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee and held a series of meetings with seven Congress legislators led by suspended leader Sudip Roy Barman and top leaders of the tribal-based Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT).
"Trinamool Congress would come to power in the next assembly polls in Tripura in 2018. Ending of Left Front's misrule is a matter of time. TMC would be a major opposition group in the state assembly soon," Roy told reporters before leaving for Kolkata.
Currently, Congress is the main opposition group in the state assembly with 10 legislators.
Sudip Roy Barman, who was the opposition leader as head of the Congress legislator party (CLP), recently resigned from the post, protesting against Congress-Left electoral alliance in the recently held West Bengal assembly elections.
Following Barman's resignation, state Congress working president Ashish Saha, Youth Congress' state chief Sushanta Chowdhury, women's front state head Kalyani Roy and scheduled caste front chief Prakash Chandra Das and many party leaders and workers quit their posts on the same issue.
The party high command last month suspended Barman and Youth Congress president Amarinder Singh Raja Brar took similar action against 14 Youth Congress leaders including Chowdhury for an indefinite period.
Barman, Saha and Chowdhury recently went to Kolkata and met both Mamata Banerjee and Mukul Roy and discussed the possibility of joining TMC.
Mukul Roy, who also met INPT leaders, said: "If we voted out the Left Front in West Bengal, we would be successful in Tripura too. Anti-Left alliance would be stronger in Tripura soon to oust the ruling Left parties."
Senior Congress leader Gopal Roy, who was recently appointed as the CLP leader by the party's central leadership, said: "Trinamool Congress instead of ideology based politics has been doing politics of splitting of other political parties."
The TMC retained power in West Bengal in the recent assembly elections, drubbing Congress-Left alliance.
