The Trinamool Congress (TMC) unit in Tripura has asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to immediately intervene and order the military (army) to fix of heavily damaged National Highway 8 in Assam.
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Opposition political parties and affected people have been organising road blockades and protests regularly to demand normal supply of fuel.
The Trinamool leader told reporters that they tried to block the entry of the ministers into the secretariat, because when the people of the state were facing severe crisis of fuel, the ministers had no right to move in vehicles. Police quelled the protest and made over 50 arrests.
Civil supplies minister Bhanu Lal Saha assured the situation would improve.
The highway has been damaged for a couple of months and the continuous rainfall has stalled fix work and turned vast stretches of the road into slush and mud.
Saha said that if the Centre wants, it can give the responsibility of repairing the damaged part of NH 8 in Assam, to the Tripura Government as it was already engaged in repairing an alternate road inside Assam.
He informed that the state government had earlier suggested that essential items including fuels be transported to Tripura through Bangladesh, but that needs time for the process to be worked out with a foreign nation. Of the vehicles 21 are petrol tankers and 36 are diesel tankers while the rest 48 are LPG bullets.
“If the central and Assam governments would have taken steps earlier to fix NH-8, then Tripura would not have suffered in such a magnitude”.
The Tripura government has been forced to ration fuel and implement an odd even policy to deal with the present situation. “The centre should be much more responsible for easing the sufferings of the northeastern states which are affected due to lack of proper surface connectivity”, he said.
It also claimed that a large number of trucks transporting essential commodities remained stuck in Assam’s Karimganj district, while many petrol pumps in Tripura remained closed without fuel.
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Petrol price hit Rs 300litre and diesel’s Rs 150L as damage on the lifeline Assam-Tripura national highway left traffic disrupted. Find us on Facebook too!
