Delegates of BJP's Tripura ally meet Home Minister demanding separate state

A four-member group of the Indigenous Peoples Front of Tripura (IPFT) led by its General Secretary and state Forest Minister Mevar Kumar Jamatia on Friday met Home Minister Amit Shah demanding a separate, full-fledged state 'Tipraland'. 'Tipraland' would be carved out of the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC), which composes about two-thirds of the state's territory.

The BJP-IPFT alliance lost the recent elections to the TTAADC in April 2021. The Tipraha Indigenous Progressive Regional Alliance (TIPRA), led by the son of the last Maharaja of Tripura, Pradyot Kishore Deb Barman, won the elections. Deb Barman has demanded a greater Tipraland including tribals living within and outside the tribal autonomous district, including in other states.

The delegation submitted a five-point memorandum to the Home Minister. Besides a new state, the memorandum also sought the submission of the report of the high-level modality committee for the development of tribals, a special recruitment drive for indigenous people, amendment of Sixth Schedule to empower the TTAADC and inclusion of Kokborok, the tribal language, in the eighth schedule of the constitution. The tribal community composes one-third of Tripura's population.

In order to protect the crisis of the identity of the Indigenous people of Tripura, we place strong demand for creation of full-fledged Statehood Tipraland based on the 6th Schedule Areas, i.e., TTAADC of Tripura, the IPFT memorandum said. After holding discussions on the High-Power Modality Committee formed by the central government for socio-economic, cultural and linguistic development of the indigenous people, the IPFT delegates asked the Home Minister to hasten the submission of the committee's report.