Development on the name of debt is not a progress, says Animesh

Agartala: Tripura’s Leader of the Opposition, Animesh Debbarma, on Monday expressed his disappointment over the mounting burden of debts on the state government and observed that development that is driven by debt cannot be called “progress.”

Debating on the motion of the Governor’s address at Tripura State Assembly, Debbarma said, “When the first BJP government was formed followed by the fall of left-party-led government, the total debt on the state government was Rs 13,000 crore.

According to Animesh Debbarma, the total burden of debt over the state government has exceeded Rs 21,000 crore mark. “In the last six years under the control of Bharatiya Janata Party, the government has only enhanced its burden with a whopping sum of Rs 8,600 crore.

My question is where the new sources of revenues for our state government are? If we fail to create new streams of revenues for the state, the slogan of Atma Nirbhar Tripura shall never be a reality anytime soon,” he said.

The senior leader of TIPRA Motha party also maintained that every year Rs 2,365 crore is spent for repayment of loan including capital and interest both. “A substantial chunk of the state’s budgetary allocation is going somewhere that does not have any visible implication. We have to think over that,” he added.That was a major highlight, and it was the center point of discussion at that point of time. But today our financial conditions have only deteriorated, at least, the statistics I have says this”.

Drawing the attention of Chief Minister Dr Manik Saha who joined the assembly session on the second half of the day’s proceedings, Debbarma said, “The Village Committee elections are not being conducted for unknown reasons. The by-elections in the District Council are also pending. When all elections are being conducted what stopped the government or the state election commission in holding polls in ADC is still a mystery”.

Hitting out at the government on “paucity of teachers” in the schools, he said, “The STGT candidates who had appeared for exams long back are staring at a future full of uncertainty. In the last assembly session, education department gave data that only 1,200 posts are vacant for the post of teachers while RTI queries revealed that around 5,000 posts of graduate teachers are vacant with the school education department. The department must clarify if both are correct which data should be believed in”.

The senior TMP legislator proposed as many as eighteen amendments in the governor’s speech.