The Tripura Chief Minister demands that the North-East insurgency problem should be viewed as a national problem.

DROPPING a bombshell, Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar alleged that the Centre was not “showing seriousness” to solve the insurgency problem gripping the North-East and urged it to hand over a list of ultras who operate in the North-East to Bangladesh for their extradition.

“The Centre is not paying attention to the Northeast insurgency problem the way it is doing in Kashmir ... It should hand over to Bangladesh a list of insurgents operating in Tripura and other North-Eastern states for extradition, in the same way it put diplomatic pressure and handed over a list of Kashmiri insurgents to Pakistan,” he said. “Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee met Bangladesh Premier Begum Khaleda Zia recently at the SAARC summit in Kathmandu, but we are not aware whether he took up the issue,” the Chief Minister said. The different insurgent groups of the region operating from Bangladesh were using Tripura as their corridor and it was difficult for the State to handle the problem arising out of the separatist demands of the insurgents, who were getting “active indulgence” of the ISI of Pakistan unless the Centre extended requisite help.

Mr. Sarkar said there are 51 base camps of NLFT and ATTF in Bangladesh, where the ultras return after killing or abducting  the innocent in Tripura. Tripura Government had already submitted documents to the Centre showing that 16 of them belonged  to ATTF and the rest to NLFT. “We have demanded speedy erection of barbed  wire fence, augmentation of BSF for properly guarding the 840-km-long porous border and more Central paramilitary forces for effectively containing insurgency,” he said.

Mr. Sarkar demanded that the North-East insurgency problem be viewed as a national problem. “Army Chief General S. Padmanabhan had himself said this and we (the NE States) are demanding  the same for a long time.” The last meeting of the Chief Ministers of the North-East, held a few months ago, had placed the demand, he said.

Mr. Sarkar also criticised the former Bangladesh Government for not properly dealing with the issue of insurgent camps in that country. One lakh women from Tripura  had even appealed in a signed letter to the former Bangladesh premier Sheikh Hasina Wazed to deal with the ultras but no note was taken of it, he lamented.
    
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