Tripura gets Trinamool state unit

"With the approval of Mamata Banerjee, a 74-member TMC Tripura Pradesh Committee was announced late Monday night with Ashish Saha as state president," TMC leader Sudip Roy Barman said.

He said that a nine-member state coordination committee was also announced with Ratan Chakraborty as chairman and Surajit Datta as convenor.

All the six TMC legislators and former Tripura Chief Minister Samir Ranjan Barman (1992-1993) are members of the coordination committee.

"Didi has formed the state committee and coordination committee comprising of both young and experienced leaders," Barman told reporters. 

"The new TMC committee would fight against the ruling Left Front to oust it from governance in the 2018 assembly elections," he said. 

In the new TMC state committee, there are 10 vice presidents with eight general secretaries, secretaries and one treasurer.

Protesting against the Congress' electoral alliance with the Left parties in West Bengal, six of the ten party legislators led by Barman, along with many heads of the Congress' frontal organisations, scores of party leaders and thousands of workers, quit the Congress and joined TMC few months back.

Both Chakraborty and Datta were former ministers of the Congress-led government that ruled the state from 1988 to 1993.