Rajnath Singh to meet tribal party of Tripura over NRC demand

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh has convened a meeting with Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT) on National Registration of Citizen (NRC) for the northeastern state, official sources said Monday. 

The meeting is scheduled to be held on October 4 in Delhi and will be participated by Singh and senior officials of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), the sources said. 

The meeting is seen as a follow-up by the MHA after the IPFT submitted memoranda to President Ramnath Kovind, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh in August demanding NRC in Tripura, they added. 

We have got an official invitation to attend a meeting with the union home minister on NRC in Tripura with 1951 as the cut off date in his office at the North Block, New Delhi, on October 4," INPT general secretary Jagadish Debbarma said here.

INPT president Bijoy Kumar Hrangkhwal and Debbarma himself would participate in the meeting on NRC, he said. 

They will highlight the problem of infiltration in Tripura, which shares 856 km international border with Bangladesh, Debbarma said adding that the party would continue to stick to its core demand for NRC with 1951 as the cut off year. 

There should not be any discrimination among genuine citizens but those who had infiltrated to the border state after 1951 must be identified through NRC, he said. 

Debbarma said INPT delegates had visited the national capital in August to meet the president, the prime minister and the union home minister but could not. 

"We had returned after leaving a memorandum to them seeking NRC in Tripura with a cut off the year 1951. Now, we will request Rajnathji to undertake NRC in Tripura to protest the legitimate rights of indigenous people, he added.

(With inputs from agencies.)