AGARTALA

Septuagenarian Kripasadhan Chakma, a landless tribal living in remote Tabidapara of Tripura's South district is not a worried man today as he is now earning a living from his own rubber garden with the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council coming to his aid. Tabidapara is a picturesque tribal hamlet on a hill surrounded by forests, hit by acute food crisis and no jobs.

With the growing threat of water scarcity in the state capital and suburbs, the Tripura Government has sent a proposal of Rs 665 crore for a project to transport water from the Gumati river, about 70 km away, through pipelines to ensure water supply to an additional 1.5 lakh families in the city. Official sources said here today that a high level committee, headed by Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar, approved the project earlier this week and sent it to the Union Urban Development Ministry for funding under the Jawaharlal Neheru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM).

AGARTALA

Perched on Killa Hill, Tobakla, a remote tribal hamlet in Tripura's South district, now shines in the dark with a non-conventional solar power plant supplying energy under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vaidyutikaran Yojana. A septuagenarian, Bikram Singh Jamatiya is a delighted man today. "My village is remote which can be approached only on foot. We lived in darkness at night. Now it is different,' he told a group of visiting journalists. "Earlier, we saw electric lights only when we went to Udaipur, the district town, which is about 25 km from the village,' he said.

Bird flu raging uncontrolled in neighbouring Bangladesh was proving to be a continuing threat to Tripura, where culling was under way after the outbreak of the H5N1 virus in the State. "Even if we cull all our birds within a five km radius of the disease-hit areas, bird-flu affected areas in Bangladesh are very close to our border villages and there are places which fall within 100 yards of affected areas in the neighbouring country,' Animal Resource Department Director Asish Roy Burman said today.

AGARTALA: The Rapid Response Teams (RRTs) have launched full-scale culling at Ladilak and its adjacent villages in Bishalgarh subdivision in Tripura today. As of now, over 1,000 chicks and ducks were culled at 11 designated places across the subdivision, said Ashudev Das, SDM (Bishalgarh) here on Sunday. He said that officials of administration and ARDD are monitoring the culling operation.

Personnel of Rapid Response Teams (RRTs) have launched full scale culling of chicks and ducks at different areas including Haticherra in West Tripura district following confirmation of the deadly avian influenza. According to the plan, the culling operation will continue for five days to eliminate more than 55,000 chicks and ducks at Haticherra and its adjacent areas. Around 55 chicks died of avian influenza at Haticherra, a tribal village of Sadar subdivision that raised alarm bell across the state.

Personnel of the Rapid Response Team of the Animal Resources Department have fanned out across eight gram panchayat areas of West Tripura district where culling will begin tomorrow in the wake of a fresh bird-flu attack, the second time in a month, in the State. An estimated 60,000 birds would be culled in the eight gram panchayat areas, which fall within the five-km radius of Mohanpur village samples from where had tested positive on April 21, Dr Ajoy Saha, in-charge of State laboratory of ARD, told PTI today.

Routine sampling of blood and faecal extracts from backyard poultry in Tripura has detected the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus, infecting birds in a village, 130 km from the state capital Agartala. The virus was isolated from Kalachari village in Mohanpur block just before it started to cause largescale mortality among birds. The samples, that were picked up on April 16, were found to be positive with H5N1 by Bhopal's High Security Animal Disease Laboratory on April 19. However, the final notification of a new outbreak in Tripura was issued by the Centre only on Monday night.