Tripura student body calls for road, railway blockade from Feb 12
Tipra Indigenous Students Federation (TISF) is planning a blockade of National Highway-8 and rail routes for an indefinite period from Monday.
TISF is the student wing of the Opposition Tipra Motha Party (TMP). The blockade is part of the students’ protest against the Tripura Board of Secondary Education’s (TBSE) decision not to allow tribal students appearing for ‘Kokborak’ language to write answers in the Roman script.
Kokborak is the language of Borok people who are geographically known as Tripuris.
The TBSE will conduct the Higher Secondary and Secondary Examinations from March 1 and over 5,000 tribal students would appear in both the examinations.
They want to write their answer scripts for the ‘Kokborak’ language in Roman script instead of Bengali.The issue also recently rocked the Tripura Assembly session.
TISF President Sajra Debbarma said that the TBSE President Dhananjoy Gan Chowdhury earlier said that both Bengali and English scripts would be allowed but recently he changed his decision saying that only Bengali script would be allowed.
For several years, Kokborok language paper answers were written in the TBSE examinations in both Bengali and English scripts.
“Our road and rail route blockade would continue till we got a written assurance from Chief Minister (Manik Saha) that he would allow Roman script for Kokborok language in the board examinations,” the student leader told the media.
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