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12th West Bengal assembly dissolved

A new Left Front ministry headed by Buddhadev Bhattacharjee is likely to be sworn-in in West Bengal on May 18, official sources said in Calcutta on Tuesday.

The Communist Party of India-Marxist state committee will meet on May 17 to formally endorse Bhattacharjee's name as the chief minister. The Left Front had contested the assembly polls projecting Bhattacharjee as its chief ministerial candidate.

The decision would be ratified at the Left Front committee meeting later in the day. The size and composition of the ministry, sources said, will also be finalised.

Meanwhile, Bhattacharjee tendered his resignation to Governor Viren J Shah paving the way for installation of the new government.

Meanwhile, keeping up its bellicose stance against the Left Front, the routed Trinamul Congress Tuesday announced that it would boycott the swearing-in of chief minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee slated for May 18.

Briefing newspersons after a meeting of the Trinamul Congress Legislature Party which elected Pankaj Banerjee as its leader, party chief Mamata Banerjee alleged that the people of the state could not vote freely in the just-concluded assembly polls because of 'state-sponsored terrorism' unleashed by the ruling CPI-M.

"The victory of the Left Front is not the victory of the people. It is the triumph of rigging and terror unleashed by the ruling combination," Banerjee charged.

"In protest against the state-sponsored terrorism, we will boycott the swearing-in," she said.

The election of Pankaj Banerjee, also the chairman of Trinamool Congress policy-making body, clears the deck for his appointment as leader of the Opposition in the state assembly.

Pradesh Congress president Pranab Mukherjee has already said that the leader of the Opposition would be from the Trinamul.

The Congress, which bagged 26 seats in the polls as against 60 won by its alliance partner, has been holding the post of leader of Opposition for the last 19 years.

The meeting also elected Ambica Banerjee as the deputy leader of the Trinamool Legislature Pand Sobhandev Chatterjee as Chief Whip.

Kalyan Chatterjee would be the secretary and Jatu Lahiri treasurer.

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