Agartala: While persuading central government to pass the 125th constitution amendment bill to give more power to autonomous district councils (ADC) of Northeastern states, Tripura royal scion Pradyot Kishore Debbarman’s TIPRA has planned to raise its own police force.
Except CPI-M, all the parties including BJP had been fighting for more power to ADC including it’s administrative autonomy.
The BJP’s ally in the state government IPFT had also held several demonstrations till before 2018 assembly elections for empowerment of ADC in true sense. But after coming to power both BJP and IPFT stopped persuading the demands, said ADC Chairman and senior TIPRA leader Jagadish Debbarma.
He said the idea is nothing new as the Congress-TUJS controlled ADC had passed a bill in this connection in 1994. It also got the Governor’s consent in the year 2007 but ultimately was not implemented. Now, ADC administration wanted to make it happen for getting self-sufficient in maintaining law and order in a better state.
He said a ten-day session is required to pass the ADC Police Bill and needs detailed discussion before passing the bill and ADC will start recruiting personnel for the post once the rules are framed.
Debbarma claimed that the tribal population is declining in ADC areas compared to it was during its formation and said during the formation of ADC, the total tribal population of the council area was 88 percent and it has now declined to 84 percent. Instead, the non-tribal population in ADC areas has increased to 16 percent from erstwhile 14 percent.
Meanwhile, opposing the rationale of Debbarma, Union Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment Pratima Bhoumik argued neither tribal population nor land decrease as of now and the figures remain intact.
The BJP-IPFT government in Tripura has done some remarkable change in the policy and action for the indigenous population of the state after Prime Minister announced new schemes and programmes.
She smells, conspiracy behind such a statement, which will widen communal divide and innocent tribal minds will be confused. To survive in politics, some parties and leaders have been raising slogans for ‘Tipraland’ and ‘Greater Tipraland’ to instigate the sentiment of common tribals, which will never materialise.
“Those raising the demand for so-called ‘Greater Tipraland’ have not yet given a clear definition of their demand, nor is there any clarity over the issue; they should carefully read Article 3 of the Indian constitution before going gaga over the issue; most dangerous thing is that we heard last year that the ‘Greater Tipraland’ proposes to include areas of Mizoram, Hailakandi district of Assam and areas
within Bangladesh which is an absurdity; it is sheer mental imbalance,” Bhoumik said.
