A four-member delegation of Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT) on Thursday met Home Minister Amit Shah in New Delhi and raised five-point charter of demands including separate Tipraland.
The emergence of the regional party IPFT of Tripura centered on the demand for a separate state – Tipraland - for indigenous people of Tripura. Even as IPFT is now an ally of ruling BJP-led coalition Government for last more than three years, the party could make headway in realizing its demand for Tipra Land. After a whitewash in recently held District Council polls, another regional party, Tipra Motha, emerged victorious with the call for ‘Greater Tipra Land’.
Motha gobbled up considerable support base of the IPFT, so much so that one of the sitting MLA of IPFT quit the party and resigned from the Assembly and joined Motha. Desperate to keep its flock together, general secretary of the IPFT as well as an MLA, Mevar Kumar Jamatia along with three other MLAs rushed to Delhi to meet the Union Home Minister with a five-point demand list – as expected, demand for a separate Tipra Land is the most important demand.
The IPFT team in its memorandum to the Home Minister mentioned that the population of indigenous people had become a minority in their own native land.
“…. 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 memorandum said.
The IPFT delegates held discussion on the High-Power Modality Committee formed for Socio-Economic-Cultural- Linguistic growth of the indigenous people and sought intervention of the Home Minister for quick submission of the report of the committee.
They also apprised the Home Minister that the state government had already sent a proposal of Rs. 8882 crore to the Centre for approval.
The IPFT delegation then demanded a special recruitment drive for filling up approximately 20,000 backlog vacancies (ST reserved).
The IPFT leaders also held discussion on amendment of Sixth Schedule of the Constitution and demanded to change over the nomenclature of TTAADC and to increase the strength of the council keeping parity with other District Councils of the North East Region.
In their meeting with Shah, the IPFT leaders raised another demand- inclusion of Kokborok in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution.
They requested the Home Minister to take initiative for enactment of the recommendation put forward by the state government without any delay. They also sought Roman script for Kokborok Language.
The three other members of the delegation were MLA Prashanta Debbarma, MLA Dhananjoy Tripura and MLA Jiten Debbarma.