GUWAHATI: Bangladesh’s construction of an embankment along the Muhuri river near the Tripura border has set the alarm bells ringing.A Tripura government delegation, led by Public Works Department Secretary Kiran Gitte, visited the border area at Belonia subdivision in South Tripura district on Sunday to conduct a study. They held a meeting with the villagers and assured them that efforts would be made to restore an embankment and repair others.Several embankments along the border were either damaged or washed away in the floods last year. The government identified 43 sites in different districts. Work to repair them will be started soon, the officials said.“All repairing and related works will be completed by June this year. Five engineers will be deputed in South Tripura district for the restoration work,” Gitte said.He asked locals not to panic and sought their cooperation to complete the work on time.Gitte was accompanied by BSF Tripura Frontier Inspector General Ashwani Kumar Sharma and several senior officials of the Tripura government.The ongoing construction of the Bangladeshi embankment has left border residents of Belonia worried. They fear that annual floods might become devastating for people living in the border areas.Meanwhile, Dipankar Sen, the local CPI-M legislator, requested the state government as well as the BSF to take up the matter with the Centre so that it intervenes.The construction of a similar embankment at a location on the border between Bangladesh’s Moulvibazar and Tripura’s Unakoti districts had triggered tensions in January this year.Locals viewed it as being against the spirit of the Indo-Bangla Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Peace, which does not allow any permanent construction within 150 yards of the zero point.
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