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Tripura CM to meet PM

Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar will meet Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on November 24 to discuss the prevailing situation arising out of rising militancy in the state.

Official sources told reporters in Agartala today that the prime minister had assured all help to the Tripura government in curbing extremism. The assurance was given to a group of Communist Party of India-Marxist Lok Sabha members led by Somnath Chatterjee in New Delhi yesterday.

Chatterjee apprised Vajpayee in detail of the prevailing situation in the state. He told the prime minister that the strength of Tripura's two militant outfits - the All Tripura Tiger Force and the National Liberation Front of Tripura - would be about 900 and the two banned outfits had procured more than 600 sophisticated arms and weapons.

Chatterjee visited Tripura on November 18 and 19 along with three other Lok Sabha members.

He also informed Vajpayee that the ATTF had eight camps and the NLFT 21 in Bangladesh territory.

To intensify the ongoing counter- insurgency operations, he demanded deployment of 54 additional companies of the army and Assam Rifles besides nine battalions of the Border Security Force along the Indo-Bangla border.

During the meeting between the prime minister and Tripura chief minister, these issues would be discussed in detail.

UNI

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