Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday inaugurated several development projects in Agartala and said the progress ushered in by the BJP’s double-engine government at the Centre and in the State is gradually turning Tripura into a “trade gateway and logistics hub” of northeast India.
The Prime Minister, who addressed a rally at Swami Vivekananda ground in Agartala, remotely inaugurated State Institute of Hotel Management at Anandanagar on the outskirts of the city, Agartala Government Dental College at Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital besides a project to widen national highway-8. He laid the foundation stone for 32 road projects with a cumulative length of 232 km under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) and launched 112 road projects and district highways of 542 km length. These projects are being developed as part of Rs 10,000-crore package provided for road connectivity development.
He also launched the ‘Griha Pravesh’ programme in Agartala, benefitting 1,51,019 families under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (rural) and 54,526 households under PMAY for urban areas.
In his address, PM Modi said Tripura is getting the fruits of the ‘HIRA model’, which is the PM’s own acronym for highways, Internet-ways, railways and airways development, and said Tripura is emerging as an important logistics hub for northeastern states.
“The Agartala-Akhaura (Bangladesh) railway line is going to open new trade routes. Northeast India is developing connectivity and relations with other countries, connecting India, Myanmar and Thailand through road infrastructure. The Maharaja Bir Bikram Airport (Agartala) has also got an international terminal and international connectivity have become easier now. This way, Tripura is becoming a trade gateway of the region,” the PM said.
He said Tripura’s development journey is reaching new heights on the fronts of connectivity, skill development, housing support and cleanliness. “Cleanliness has became a mass movement in the last five years, and, as a result, Tripura has emerged as the cleanest among small states of the country,” Modi said.
Tripura was declared the cleanest among smaller state (having fewer than 100 urban local bodies) in the country in the central government’s annual cleanliness survey.
On the PMAY dwelling units handed over on Sunday, PM Modi said each of these houses cost “lakhs of rupees” and most of the beneficiaries were women who had become “lakhpati (millionaire)” with their flats registered in their name.
Criticising the former Congress and Left Front-led governments in Tripura, the PM said, “Earlier, Tripura was discussed in national forums during elections or during violent incidents. Now time has changed. Now, the state is being discussed for cleanliness, infrastructure development and poor people’s housing development.”
Without naming any party in particular, the PM said those who did “opportunist politics”, and purportedly deprived the state for their own interests, had actually hurt youth, farmers and womens’ interests.
Reiterating his claim that the ‘double-engine government’ of BJP at Delhi and Agartala was helping in speedy progress of Tripura, Modi said the Centre was providing hundreds of crores of rupees for development projects and the state government was efficiently using it.
He said the BJP-led government’s policies in the state have helped the tribals, backward classes, women and youth, besides other sections of society.
Speaking at the event, Chief Minister Manik Saha said Tripura has progressed a lot, including infrastructure development, good governance and other services, since 2018 when the BJP-Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT) government came to power in the state.
“We all know how Modiji established this government, uprooting the reign of terror in Tripura. He has given a lot to us, he spoke of HIRA. We have 6 national highway work going on, seven more are in the way. Work is in progress in several other sectors,” he said.
