Agartala: Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Anupriya Patel in a communication to Rajya Sabha member and former Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb on Friday said the Central Government has been continuously persuading with its Bangladesh counterpart to reopen the Border Haats at Kamlasagar and Srinagar in Sepahijala and South Tripura respectively, which were closed for last three years due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Patel informed, “We are continuously raising the matter of reopening of Border Haats at Kamlasagar and Srinagar in the bilateral meetings with Bangladesh. We are hopeful of an early resolution of this matter.”
Tripura government had on a number of occasions approached Bangladesh to reopen the Border Haats over past two years after situation became normal but Dhaka has not yet to allow reopening of the Haats.
In December last year, Deb raised the issue in the Parliament requesting the government to reopen the two ‘Border Haats’ (market shed at Indo-Bangladesh) in Tripura to promote trading and support the livelihood of local residents of both side of the border. The suspension of Border Haats has affected the livelihood of a large number of people living along the border on both the sides.
The four Border Haats, two each in Tripura and Meghalaya, have remained closed since March 2020 after the outbreak of the Covid19 pandemic and the consequent lockdowns, that affected formal small trading, the initiative to further strengthen people to people relations of two countries and also check illegal trade
