Agartala, Sep 10 (UNI) The Congress sponsored 12 hours general strike supported by the Left parties protesting the price hike of petroleum products has mixed response in Tripura today though most of the private schools were declared holiday, business establishments were closed and passenger vehicles were stayed off the road.
Train service in the state was normal and most of the government schools in all major towns of the state including Agartala were functional with small number of students. The movement of vehicles was very low. The government opposed the bandh and mobilized a huge number of security personnel across the state to keep the life normal.
There was not much picketing except a few locations with small number of congress workers. The CPI (M) supported the bandh but announced not to go for picketing. There was no untoward incident reported from anywhere in the state. Most of the places life was normal and there was no impact of bandh, police said.
The government has undertaken all preventive measures against the strike and all of its employees were directed to attend the offices on time and warned of strict action against absentees. Police said that large numbers of central paramilitary, TSR and police would be deployed across the state along with riot control forces and vehicles.
Tripura Road Transport Corporation (TRTC) has been running special bus services on since morning with security in the capital city covering all important destinations while state police managed special bus service for the passengers to and from airport and railway stations.
However, Tripura Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) president Birjit Sinha claimed that by and large people responded to the protest positively and admitted that congress could not organised picketing in many places due to their poor strength of cadres. But the common people supported it, as Centre has created unprecedented economic crisis in the country and had failed to keep its pre-poll promise.
“The people of the country are now united to show their protest against abrupt hike of petroleum products, which creates miseries in the live of common people", he said adding that protesting autocratic and anti-people steps of union government, maximum of opposition parties have supported it.
The present prices of petroleum products in comparison to prices in 2014 during UPA government, Sinha said that prices of crude oil in 52 months of the Modi government has decreased up to 34.09 Dollar and similarly they increased prices of petrol, diesel and LPG cylinders. They demanded that petrol and diesel should be brought under Goods and Services Tax (GST) and immediate decrease sales tax and central excise duty on petrol and diesel to ease the burden on common people.
Criticizing the BJP-IPFT government in Tripura he pointed out that jobless situation, crisis of food and work and economic activities in the state have been collapsed in last six months. The government is utterly failed to implement it’s single poll promise so far rather created a complete anarchy in the administration where all democratic rights of the opposition is ceased.
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