Traffic movement on the Assam–Agartala National Highway was brought to a halt late on Sunday after surrendered militants blocked the road at Baramura in West Tripura. The protestors demanded that the state government immediately restart a rehabilitation scheme that has remained stalled for several years. The blockade began on the night of December 21 and continued into Monday, leaving a long line of vehicles stuck on both sides of the affected stretch. Truck drivers and passengers said they waited for hours with no information on when the road would reopen. The highway is one of the key routes that links Tripura to the rest of the Northeast, and any disruption affects the movement of goods and passengers.
The demonstrators identified themselves as members of an organisation named the Tripura Guerrilla Returned Demand Committee. They said the group consists of former militants who had surrendered before 1998 and joined the mainstream following talks with the then Left Front government. One protester explained that the government had agreed to help them rebuild their lives through a rehabilitation scheme sanctioned many years ago. He recalled that on May 22, 2007, an amount of Rs 45 crore was approved for the rehabilitation programme. According to him, meetings were held and the scheme moved forward between 2008 and 2018. He said activities stopped after a change of government and later during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, he claimed, there has been no further progress or communication from officials.
The protesters alleged that about Rs 22 crore of the sanctioned fund had already been used before the scheme came to a halt. They demanded that the government utilise the remaining amount and complete the programme as promised. They accused authorities of failing to respond to repeated requests for updates and support for surrendered militants. In addition to the financial issue, the protesters raised concerns about livelihood schemes under the Chief Minister’s Rubber Mission. They said that while the scheme had functioned smoothly for the first three years, this year it was not implemented properly. One protester said former militants were given rubber saplings but no funds for fencing them, which made cultivation risky. He said written appeals and verbal requests to the administration had brought no results so far. The group warned that the blockade would continue if their demands were not addressed. One of them said that if talks failed, they would block the highway again in future. The protesters also called for the withdrawal of all pending cases against surrendered militants who have returned to civilian life.
