Agartala, Feb 24 (IANS): The strength of women members of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) in Tripura rose to a record 26 percent against 12 percent at the national level, a top party leader said here Tuesday.

"Around 26 percent out of 87,691 CPI-M members in Tripura are women. Always the percentage of women members of the party was higher in Tripura compared to national proportion," Tripura CPI-M state secretary Bijan Dhar told reporters.

He said that after the last state conference in 2012, the number of party members rose to 87,691 from 76,636 despite 1,391 party members getting killed. Besides, another 707 members were expelled from the party on numerous grounds and 7,072 members did not renew their membership.

At the national level, 12 percent of the total 1,065,406 members (as per 2013 data) are women.

"Quality of party members is a big issue for us. Our rectification move is on and this is an endless task. To maintain quality of membership is also a non stop endeavour," said Dhar, also a CPI-M central committee member.

He said that ahead of the four-day 21st state conference of the CPI-M, beginning Wednesday, conferences of eight district committees, 24 divisional committees, 244 local committees and 6,000 branch committees were held during the past three months.

A large number of secretaries in three tiers - divisional, local and branch - have been dropped due to diverse reasons.

CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat, his wife and party's politburo member Brinda Karat, West Bengal CPI-M state secretary Biman Bose and Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar are the key speakers at the indoor party conference.