AGARTALA: The Tipra Motha Party (TMP), which is now Tripura's main opposition party and governs the politically important Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC), for the first time on Friday threatened to launch an agitation if the BJP government did not release due funds and did not hold elections in village councils. The TMP, in a memorandum to Governor Satyadeo Narain Arya, said that the TTAADC has been facing "unceasing stepmotherly treatment" by the state government.
In the last two years of the present TTAADC authority, it sent many important bills to the Governor for his assent after these were passed in the council sessions but are pending approval without any reason. The memorandum said that out of the total of Rs 619.25 crore allocated to the TTAADC by the state government for the last financial year (2022–23), Rs 126.59 crore is yet to be released, causing delays in the disbursement of staff salaries and hindering other development activities. For the current fiscal (2023–24), to date, only about Rs 4.24 crore has been allocated for the developmental work, it said. The TMP said that the elections to the village councils (equivalent to gram panchayats), originally scheduled to take place in March 2021, were also being delayed even after the clear directions by the Tripura High Court.
The non-holding of the village council election has severely affected the developmental and welfare works in TTAADC areas, it said. When a delegation led by TMP supremo Pradyot Bikram Manikya Deb Barman went to meet the Governor to hand over the memorandum, they were not allowed to enter the Raj Bhavan, and in protest, they organised a sit-in-demonstration for a while. (IANS)
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