Agartala, June 7:
Hundreds of members from 56 tribal organizations under the banner of ‘Roman Script for Kokborok Choba’ are demonstrating a sitting protest in Agartala on demand for adopting Roman script for Kokborak language.
Kokborak is the most spoken language among the indigenous section of people in Tripura who consist of 31 percent of total population of around 40 lakh.
The agitators displayed play card and banner as they raised slogans in favour of their demand.
The demonstrators viewed that the script issued is pending for more than five decades but none of the government including the present government is serious in resolving it.
They alleged that despite several commissions were formed for resolving the Kokborok script issue and they favoured for Roman script but the government is maintaining silence on it.
They also viewed that from a recent reply RTI reply it has been found that given a choice to reply examination answer sheets either in Bengali or Roman, more than 99 percent of the Kokborak speaking students prefer to reply in Roman script and so they demanded that no one should be compelled to use Bengali script.
They demanded that upto the university level students should be allowed to answer in Roman script.
They demanded that the government resolve this issue immediately or they shall have no other option but to go for bigger agitation across the state.
Kokborak the most popular tribal language of the state got recognition as an official language in the year 1979 but is yet to get its script as a section of the Kokborok speaking is in favour of Bengali while the other wants Roman script.