48-hour shut-down cripples life in Tripura, tension runs high

Agartala, Feb 16: Normal life was severely affected in the tension-ridden Gandacherra sub-division in Tripura on Thursday, as a local tribal party called for a48-hour shut-down to protest “police high-handedness”. The state police said that the government, semi-government as well as private offices, educatiol institutions, banks, shops and business establishments were closed. According to the police, heavy tension has been prevailing in the tribal domited areas.

The Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT), a tribal-based party, called the 48-hour strike in Gandacherra in tribals-domited Dhalai district to protest the alleged police “high-handedness” on February 8 when three tribal parties had called a 12-hour bandh to oppose the Centre’s citizenship bill. Around 50 persons were injured, four of them critically, when bandh (shut-down) supporters and ruling Left Front members clashed in six places in Tripura on February 8. On Wednesday night, five Tripura State Rifles (TSR) troopers were injured when several hundred IPFT members attacked them.

“Huge contingents of TSR, BSF (Border Security Force), CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force) and Assam Rifles led by Inspector General of Police (law and order) K.V. Sreejesh are overseeing the situation in and around the Gandacherra sub-division,” a police official said here. Three opposition tribal parties — Indigenous tiol Party of Triupura (INPT), IPFT and the tiol Conference of Tripura (NCT) — jointly called a dawn-to-dusk general strike in Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC) areas on February 8 to oppose the central government’s Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016. (IANS)