• Abhijit Nath, NET Correspondent, Tripura 

On the second half of the first day’s state assembly, legislators of the treasury and opposition benches on Friday had a heated debate blaming each other for increasing numbers of unemployment across Tripura for a long period.

The opposition CPI-M MLAs intended to know about the efforts of the state government regarding filling of vacancies while the ruling BJP MLAs elaborated how the government is making untiring efforts to strengthen youths with financial support under different schemes and end the dependency on jobs offered by the government.

CPI-M MLA Sudhan Das on Friday moved a private member resolution and MLA Bhanu Lal Saha said “The regular government employees number stood at a little over 1.13 lakh as per the budget at a glance report. However, the total number of government employees now is 1 lakh 04 thousand 683 in the last report tabled during the budget session. Over 9,000 people went to retirement. Similarly, 44,368 employees were not paid under regular pay scale and at present, the number is 33,399. Here also a large number of vacant posts have been created. Our query is when will these vacant posts be filled up?”

CPI-M MLA Sudhan Das in his private member resolution said, “The educated youths are in a state of confusion due to different views of the ICA minister, Education minister and Chief Minister. The TET qualified teachers are protesting and the JRBT aspirants have been protesting for a year now for publication of the results”.

Reacting to the CPIM MLA Das’ statement, Treasury Bench’s Chief Whip Kalyani Roy held the opposition responsible for transforming the state into a godown of unemployment while BJP MLA Sudhangshu Das castigated the previous Leftist government for not promoting self-reliance.

Education Minister Ratan Lal Nath said that all should be having a positive outlook. The government has disbursed huge amounts of loans under Swabalamban, PMEGP and other schemes to a large number of people and all are living a healthy life”. He also said that all the TET-qualified job aspirants would be recruited soon according to the promise of the government.