AGARTALA, August 2 (TIWN): The Tripura Pradesh Congress today said that all District Congress committees would be re-constituted within August 15 to strengthen the party base till grass root level. An extended meeting of the party top brass with presidents of all nineteen Block Congress Committees was held at the Congress Bhawan in Agartala this afternoon.

Pradesh Congress president Diba Chandra Hrangkhawl presided over the meeting while opposition leader Sudip Roy Barman, PCC working president Ashish Kumar Saha and others attended the session alongwith other senior leaders of the party. The meeting today resolved that the Congress party would start membership drive across the state from August 20 – birthday of late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

Organizational workshops would be started in each of the nine organizational district committees from the first week of September this year. The workshops would continue till the third week of the month.

Speaking to reporters later today, PCC working president Ashish Kumar Saha said that Congress was least concerned about disruption of alliance with its usual tribal partner – Indigenous Nationalist Party of Twipra (INPT).

“We are rather relieved that the INPT has disrupted alliance with us. We feel we can now focus on strengthening our party organization”, Saha said. He claimed that anti-left voters of the state still consider Congress as reliable opposition. In a significant political development, the Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT) snapped ties with Congress in July this year.

INPT general secretary Jagadish Debbarma didn’t give out any particular reasons for the decision but said that the tribal political party wouldn’t have anything to do with Congress henceforth. A source in INPT recently said that the party was trying to figure out prospects of alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).