IPFT to meet PM for demarcation of tribal area in Tripura

Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT), an ally of the BJP-led government in the state will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on July 14 in New Delhi to press for demarcation of the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council(TTAADC), a party leader said Tuesday.

IPFT assistant general secretary Mangal Debbarma said that the TTADC boundary was last demarcated in 1994-95.

As part of the demarcation exercise tribal-dominated villages outside the council area were brought under its purview while the non-tribal dominated villages within the TTAADC are excluded from it, party sources said.

The TTADC constitutes two-third of the state's territory and is home to the tribals, who constitute a third of the state's population.

Debbarma said the ministry of home affairs (MHA) had assured an IPFT delegation before the Tripura assembly polls in 2018 to make 10 tribal habitations "model villages". Despite the passage of one and half years, work on it is yet to start.

The decision to meet the prime minister was taken during the two-day state conference of IPFT held at Khumulwung, the headquarter of the tribal council.

Debbarma said that a high-level modality committee was formed by MHA just before the February 2018 assembly elections to formulate ways to develop the tribal council areas in the state. "Now, the time has come to find out what the modality committee has studied and when development will actually begin".

The tribal party would also demand distribution of free ration to BPL families in 23 rural development blocks in TTAADC during the lean agricultural period starting from August this year, he said.

Debbarma said that the party delegation will also press for inclusion of Kokborok, the language of the state's tribals, in the eighth schedule of the Constitution.

"This is our old demand and the Tripura government had already recommended and had forwarded it to the MHA," he said.

During the party conference, the IPFT president and state revenue minister Narendra Chandra Debbarma and general secretary Mevar Kumar Jamatiya, who is also the state forest minister, were re-elected to their party posts.