Centre must resume talks with insurgent outfits operating on Bangladeshi soil: Manik Sarkar

Agartala: Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar has urged the Centre to restart the peace dialogue with the insurgent outfits who have their hideouts in neighbouring Bangladesh. “Following the requests from the insurgent outfit, National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT), the central government held three rounds of tripartite talks with the outfit and the state government,” Sarkar said. [caption id=“attachment_3937289” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar. PIB[/caption] But for the last couple of months, no such dialogues took place, he added. “So, I would request the central government to restart the dialogue for peace in the state,” Sarkar told the Assembly on Tuesday evening. He said the state government has intelligence inputs that the terror outfit, which is still using the soil of Bangladesh, would support a non-left political party, Indigenous Peoples Front of Tripura (IPFT), if it contested in the next Assembly elections scheduled to be held in February next year. Peace and tranquillity were established in the state after many decades of insurgency and it would be disastrous for the state if NLFT supported IPFT in the next elections," he added. The IPFT had been campaigning for a separate state since 2009 by carving out the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC), which constitutes two-thirds of the state territory and the home to the tribals who form a third of the state’s population. Sarkar, who is also the home minister of the state, said the former chief of banned All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF), Ranjit Debbarma, was arrested from Khowai district recently for delivering a seditious lecture in a public meeting. Debbarma was pushed back from Bangladesh in 2012 by that country’s authorities and was arrested by the state police subsequently. He was granted bail by a court in 2015.