Agartala, Nov. 7: Tripura's 176-year-old capital Agartala has been conferred the clean and green city award by a Delhi-based urban life and development study group, Scotch Group.

Agartala topped the 29 towns and cities short-listed by the group for the award. 'Tripura's capital town has been selected for the award because of its green cover, cleanliness and solid waste management. We have been able to fulfil all the parameters on which the selection was based,' said Prafullajit Sinha, chairperson of Agartala Municipal Council, which now has 35 wards, including the extended areas over the outlying areas of the town.

He said more than 650 cleaners are engaged in keeping the town clean day and night. 'Everyday 250 metric tonnes of solid waste is generated in the municipal areas and collected from each home and sent to the sanitary land-fill station at Uttar Debendra Nagar,' Sinha said.

He said altogether 68 vehicles carry solid waste from the areas daily, after they are collected from homes and kept in waste posts in each locality. 'We incur an annual expense of Rs 3 crore on fuel to keep the vehicles running. We are purchasing 30 more small vehicles and 200 containers to keep up the cleaning,' Sinha said.

Sinha said more than 650 cleaners and several thousand workers under Tripura Urban Employment Programme were engaged in the cleaning. 'We are planning to fit the new vehicles with GPS for better co-ordination at work,' Sinha said. He said delegations from corporations and municipal authorities from Guwahati and other capitals of the Northeast had visited Agartala to gather first-hand experience of the municipal work to keep the town clean and green.

Tracing the history of Agartala town, Sinha said Agartala, as the capital of erstwhile princely Tripura, had been launched by king Krishna Kishore Manikya (1830-1849) in 1838.

'The town was growing slowly under the princely rule but Tripura's last king, Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya (1923-1947), had tried to upgrade Agartala to a modern planned city on the basis of his experience in European and American towns which he had visited twice,' Sinha said.

But the king's plan went haywire as Tripura was merged with the Indian Union on October 15, 1949. The influx of a huge number of people into Tripura from the state's royal family's erstwhile domains in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) put a stop to Agartala's planned growth.

Now Agartala has a population of more than 4 lakh.