Digital
Desk: Former Tripura chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb was elected to the Rajya
Sabha on Thursday on the state's lone by-election seat, an expected victory
given the Bharatiya Janata Party's comfortable majority in the assembly.
Deb received
43 votes, defeating CPM candidate and former finance minister Bhanulal Saha,
who received only 15 votes.
The BJP has 36 seats in the
60-member assembly, while the Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT) has
seven; the CPM has 15 and the Congress has one.
According to reports, the sole
member of Congress did not vote.
"I am grateful to the Tripura
BJP and IPFT MLAs for electing me as a Rajya Sabha MP, as well as to Prime
Minister Sri @narendramodi Ji, @BJP4India President Sri @JPNadda Ji, and HM Sri
@AmitShah for giving me this opportunity to represent Tripura in Rajya
Sabha." "With Mata Tripurasundari's blessings, I will continue to
serve the beloved people of Tripura until my last breath," Deb wrote on
Twitter.
The Rajya Sabha seat became vacant after
Manik Saha resigned to become chief minister in place of Deb.
Deb returned to Tripura in 2015 as
in-charge of the BJP's Mahajan sampark Abhiyan, just three years before the
state assembly elections, after spending 16 years in Delhi.
A year later, he was elected state
BJP president, and in 2018, he was elected Chief Minister after his party won
power for the first time in an alliance with a regional indigenous political
party, IPFT.
Deb was rarely seen in political activities after his abrupt
resignation on May 14, except on a few occasions with Saha. Saha was previously
known to be Deb's close aide.
for two terms. Das sparked outrage in 2017 when he threatened BJP supporters that
if the Left Front regained power in 2018, he would not spare them.
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