Agartala, Oct. 25: The Left Front government in Tripura is in a soup over admission of the son of the principal private secretary to health minister Tapan Chakraborty, Ashok Biswas, to the state-run Tripura Institute of Technology.

The government is yet to formally react to the issue though leader of the Opposition Ratanlal Nath today said unless the illegal admission was cancelled the Congress would launch statewide protests.

Earlier during the Congress-Tripura Upajati Juba Samity coalition government rule in 1988-1993, the government, including late chief minister Sudhir Ranjan Mazumder personally, had been implicated and chargesheeted by the CBI in a scam involving admission to a medical college outside the state. The Left Front has been using this issue in its anti-Congress and election campaign ever since.

According to information available from official sources, altogether 220 seats in eight courses in the institute were to be filled up this year from among applicants on the basis of number secured in English, physical science and mathematics in the Madhyamik or exams of equivalent standard.

Almost all the students admitted this year to the TIT first year course were found to have obtained 80 per cent or more marks but one student named Anirban Biswas who had secured less than 50 per cent marks was admitted in the mechanical stream first year course.

“The issue came to notice after a group of guardians had protested the admission in a letter to principal A.K. Acharya. A review of the issue will be undertaken,” one of the sources said.

Sources in the institute said shortly after the Madhyamik results, the health minister’s principal private secretary, Biswas, visited the campus in the Narsingarh area, 10km north of Agartala, and urged the authorities to admit his son Anirban.

“We did point out that with such low-grade results Anirban could not be admitted and though Biswas assured us that in case of any problem he would protect us we refused citing the problem with RTI-based letters from interested guardians and students,” a source in the institute said.

He also added that finally Biswas had enquired about reservation position for physically handicapped students. Biswas returned from the institute and obtained a certificate from the district disability rehabilitation centre, a society under the health department, to the effect that his son is hearing impaired.

Biswas visited the campus again with the certificate and got his son admitted to the mechanical engineering course.

Sources said that there was no problem with Anirban’s ears. “He is normal but Biswas, who wields considerable power as the principal private secretary to the health minister, prevailed upon the DDRC authorities to issue the certificate which actually is fake,” the source said.

Having elicited all information through a letter based on Right to Information (RTI) Act, a group of guardians approached Nath to raise the issue.

Speaking to reporters, Nath said this morning that he was writing a letter to the director of higher education demanding cancellation of the illegal admission and if it was not done major protests would be organised across the state.

While Biswas made himself incommunicado, sources in the CPM here refused to make any comment on the issue on the basis of allegations made by Nath.

“In case a formal letter of complaint is submitted, the matter may be looked into and reviewed but before that no action is possible,” the source said.

Health minister Tapan Chakraborty who had left for his hometown Kailasahar this morning was not available for comment.