6 Tribal Autonomous Councils in Assam gets Central fund to build own offices

NEW DELHI: The Central government has sanctioned Rs 1 crore for each of the six Tribal Autonomous Councils to build their office space, minister of state for tribal affairs Ranee Narah said. All those councils are currently running their secretariats from rented accommodations.

The councils which will now have their own offices are Tiwa Autonomous Council at Marigaon, Rabha Autonomous Council at Goalpara, Deori Autonomous Council at Lakhimpur, Mishing Autonomous Council at Dhemaji, Thengal Kachari Autonomous Council at Titabor and Sonowal Kachari Autonomous Council at Dibrugarh.

“None of those autonomous councils have their own office space. For them, the availability of land is not an issue. The problem was, they did not have fund. Ideally, none of these councils should run their office from rented accommodations,” Mrs Narah said.

A three-time Lok Sabha MP from Assam, Narah got a berth in Manmohan Singh’s council of ministers only in October last year.

“In the last few months, I have been focusing on creating infrastructure in tribal areas of the North-East. The idea is to create more auditoriums, schools and office spaces in some tribal areas there,” she said.

Meanwhile, Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation of India Limited, or TRIFED, which comes under the administrative control of the tribal affairs ministry, may soon undertake training programmes for weavers of Assam and North-East. “Some of our tribal designs have already become popular in rest of India. If we can provide adequate training to NE weavers, their products will be popular outside. TRIFED is already on that job,” she added.