Agartala, May 18: The opposition TIPRA Motha on Wednesday sought chief minister Manik Saha’s intervention to get the central and state education boards to set Kokborok question papers in both Roman and Bengali scripts.

Taking to Twitter, TIPRA Motha chief Pradyot Kishore Manikya Debbarma tweeted, “I have advised the TTAADC administration to go to the High court regarding the script issue in CBSE. As a society we cannot accept the imposition of language against our choice. We need to be united in this matter.”

Opposition leader Animesh Debbarma, in a letter to chief minister Manik Saha, requested the government to intervene immediately.

“In the year 2019-2020 and 2021-2022 the Directorate of Higher Education, Government of Tripura, carried out a survey to find out the preference of script in writing Kokborok language by the students. For your kind information, in the year 2019-2020, out of 6,649 students opting for Kokborok language, 6,643 opted for Roman script (99.9%) and 6 opted for Bengali script (0.09%)… For the year 2021-2022, out of 9,147 students opting for Kokborok language, 9,143 opted for Roman script (99.95%) and 4 opted for Bengali script (0.04%),” the letter stated.

Debbarma wrote that barring two Bengali speakers, all of the nearly 330 Kokborok postgraduates had written their answers in Roman script.

He added that since the establishment of the Kokborok department at Tripura University in 2015, question papers for the MA entrance test and semester exams are set in both the scripts.

Debbarma also wrote that the Tripura Public Service Commission conducted an examination for assistant professors in Kokborok last year in Roman script.

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