Agartala, Aug. 29 (PTI): Union Minister for Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, Giriraj Singh on Sunday said Tripura is emerging as a model state in the country.
Singh said, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was very keen to develop the entire north eastern state and the region would be the gateway for development in the future.
I am happy to see that Tripura is fast emerging as a model state. Real development of the state started only after the BJP-led government came to power in 2018.
One of the preconditions of development is the empowerment of women. The women in Tripura are being empowered through activities of SHGs, the union minister said at an interaction here with self-help groups.
Singh also distributed cheques worth INR 35 crore among 1,014 SHGs as loans sanctioned by the state government.
Earlier on Friday, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had visited the state and promised quick clearance for a INR 1300-crore project for Tripura's Tribal areas.
Trinamool Congress, which managed to best BJP at the hustings in elections to the West Bengal assembly earlier this year has been making inroads into Tripura with high profile visits of its leaders to the state.
In recent elections to the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council, the ruling BJP and its allies were also trounced by the newly formed Tipraha Indigenous Progressive Regional Alliance led by a former royal, Pradyot Kishore Deb Barman, causing alarms about the future prospects of the ruling alliance.
Even I could not imagine that the sisters of Tripura have this level of inspiration and skills in their works. I visited Tripura in 2016, when the number of SHGs were just 4,061, which grew six times within a short span of time. The number of the groups rose to 23,707 after the BJP government came into power in 2018, Giriraj said.
Tripura Government wants to bring all eight lakh rural families of Tripura under SHG by 2025 with the help of the central government, he said.
Tripura will develop that day when 7 lakh sisters will achieve livelihood, Tripura will be a model state when not a single one would be left where piped water does not reach. The State government is working with this object, he said.