Home Minister to visit Reang tribal settlement camps in Tripura on Dec 22

Agartala (The Uttam Hindu): Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who will attend the 72nd Plenary Session of the North Eastern Council (NEC) in Agartala on December 21, will visit the Reang tribal settlement camps in Dhalai district the next day, officials said on Wednesday.

Over 37,135 displaced Reang tribals migrated from Mizoram in 1997 after ethnic troubles there and settled in 12 locations in four districts of Tripura -- North Tripura, Dhalai, Gomati, and South Tripura. After several years of tussles and agitations, a quadripartite agreement was signed in January 2020 between the Centre, Tripura, and Mizoram governments and the Reang tribal leaders to resettle the 37,136 tribal immigrants comprising 6,302 families in 12 locations in four of Tripura’s eight districts.

A Tripura government official said that the Home Minister would visit the Reang tribal settlement camp at Bruha para (Haduklau para) in Dhalai district on December 22 and he would address a public meeting at Masurai Para in the district. Shah would also attend the National Cooperative Conference on the same day at Rabindra Satabarshiki Bhavan in Agartala. Home Minister Amit Shah, Minister for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) Jyotiraditya Scindia, and Governors and Chief Ministers of all eight northeastern states will attend the Plenary Session of the NEC in Agartala on December 21.

The official said that Governors, Chief Ministers, Deputy Chief Ministers, top officials of the Centre and eight NE states would attend the important NEC meeting. The progress of various ongoing and proposed development projects will be discussed in the two-day vital meeting of the NEC, a regional planning body. According to the official, a review meeting of the works and planning of the North Eastern Space Application Centre (NESAC) will be held on December 22.

Union Home Minister and ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) Chairman S. Somanath will attend the NESAC meeting. The Union Home Minister is the President of the NESAC Society while the ISRO chief is the Chairman of the NESAC Governing Council.

Through satellite-based imageries and studies, the NESAC, situated in Meghalaya's Umiam, helped the northeastern states in planning, preparing and monitoring diverse projects ranging from agriculture to various infrastructures. The NEC plenary session was supposed to be held on August 31 and September 1 but it was postponed due to the devastating floods in Tripura.

The Union Home Minister, in the previous NEC meeting in Shillong, had said that in the 50 years of its establishment, the NEC has increased the pace of development of the region by providing a policy-related platform to all the states and simplifying the solutions to their problems. He had said that in these 50 years, more than 12,000 km of roads have been constructed in this region, 700 MW power plants have been established and many institutes of national excellence have also been established under the guidance of NEC.

Highlighting the role and scope of NEC under the Act East Policy, the Home Minister had said that in the last few years, the Modi government has achieved significant success in solving the problems of law and order, insurgency and borders in this region. With its headquarters in Meghalaya's capital Shillong, the NEC, a regional planning and statutory advisory body for the eight northeastern states including Sikkim, was constituted under the North Eastern Council Act, 1971, and came into being on November 7, 1972.