Manik Saha To Take Oath As Tripura CM Today; PM Modi To Attend The Ceremony

• Image Credit: Google

• Mar 8, 2023 | Dhupali Das

The oath ceremony will be held at Vivekananda Maidan in Agartala and will be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi...

Digital Desk: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Manik Saha, a dentist-turned-politician who steered the party to power in Tripura, will be taking oath as the chief minister of the state for the second consecutive term today. The oath-taking ceremony will be held at Vivekananda Maidan in Agartala and will be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP chief JP Nadda, and several CMs from BJP-ruled states.

Manik Saha, who led the BJP to victory, is a dental surgeon who joined the BJP in 2016 after leaving Congress. He was made state party chief in 2020 and elected to the Rajya Sabha in March 2022. He was a BJP MP until the change of guard last year. In 2022, Saha took over Biplab Kumar Deb to steer the party in the Assembly polls amid a multi-cornered contest in the northeast state.

Earlier on Monday, Chief Minister-designate Manik Saha urged Governor Satyadeo Narain Arya to stake his claim to form the government in the Northeast state. On Monday, there was a general meeting of all newly elected BJP MLAs, who unanimously proposed Manik Saha as the legislature party's leader.

The BJP reclaimed power in the state with an absolute majority. The Indian Election Commission reports that the BJP won 32 seats with a vote share of around 39%. Tipra Motha Party came in second place with 13 seats. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) got 11 seats, while the Congress received three seats.

The majority mark in Tripura's 60-member assembly is 31. The BJP, which had never won a single seat in Tripura prior to 2018, stormed to power in the last election in alliance with the IPFT, ousting the Left Front, which had ruled the border state for 35 years since 1978.