Fifty-nine-year-old Manik Sarkar is all set to assume office once again as the Chief Minister of Tripura with the Left Front, that won the Assembly elections for the fourth consecutive term (and sixth since 1978), fixing March 11 as the auspicious day for launching its fresh term.The State Committee of the CPI(M) met at Agartala on Saturday to review the election results. Party spokesman Gautam Das said the CPI(M) would have a sitting with its two other Left Front partners -— the RSP and CPI -— before finalising the list of MLAs who would be sworn in along with Sarkar. The RSP and CPI have won two and one seats, respectively. Sarkar, whose father worked in a grocery shop while his mother was a Government health worker, had jumped into public life during the food movement in Tripura in 1967, and became a CPI(M) full-timer in 1972 after having graduated from Calcutta University in Commerce. First elected to the Assembly in 1981 from the Agartala constituency, Sarkar shifted to Dhantala constituency in 1998 and was appointed Chief Minister of Tripura in March 1998 following the death of Dasarath Deb, a father figure of the Communist movement in the erstwhile princely state of Tripura that merged with the Indian Union in 1949.
