Agartala, Jan. 10: In a bid to build and strengthen the infrastructure for higher education, the Tripura government has decided to upgrade the polytechnic institute at Narsingarh into a full-fledged engineering college.

Announcing this to mediapersons, chief minister Manik Sarkar said following the upgradation of the erstwhile Tripura Engineering College to the National Institute of Technology, the number of seats for Tripura students have come down to 50 per cent of the total intake. He hoped that the college would make up for the shortfall in seats in NIT. The institute to be renamed Tripura Institute of Technology will be modelled after the North Eastern Regional Institute of Science and Technology in Arunachal Pradesh.

“The college will have 250 seats every year. Of this, 40 each will be for students of civil, mechanical and electrical engineering, electronics and telecommunication, computer science and technology. There will be 25 seats each for information technology and other courses,” the chief minister said, adding that 25 per cent of the seats will be open for students of diploma engineering.

DA hike

Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar announced a five per cent increase in dearness allowance for government employees and dearness relief for pensioners from January, reducing the gap between the central government and state government employees by 10 per cent.

Central government employees are receiving 79 per cent DA, while the state employees and pensioners will be getting 69 per cent with the latest instalment.