By IANS
Agartala : The Tripura government Wednesday urged New Delhi to grant financial assistance to the flood-hit state with the estimated loss to properties, agriculture and infrastructure pegged at Rs.1 billion.
“The central government should relax its norms in providing financial assistance to the northeastern states to deal with the loss caused by natural calamities, including floods,” Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar said.
Three waves of floods triggered by heavy monsoon rains in Tripura have caused extensive damage to a large number of roads, bridges, power transmission lines, houses besides standing crops, fisheries and other assets.
“Many parts of the Assam-Agartala National Highway (NH-44), considered the lifeline of Tripura, Mizoram, southern parts of Assam and Manipur, have also been swamped due to the flood. This has badly affected the transportation of essential commodities and vehicular fuel in the past fortnight,” Sarkar told journalists.
The communication problem in the land-locked region has further worsened with railways unable to transport essential commodities for the past three months due to the collapse of a vital link bridge in southern Assam.
“The union government is not giving due priority to the improvement of the deplorable surface communication in the region,” the chief minister said.
Prices of essential commodities have shot up in Tripura, Mizoram, southern Assam and parts of Manipur as these areas have been almost cut off from the rest of the country for the past 12 days.