Agartala, Jan. 19: The sensitive issue of tribal Kokborok language has again occupied the centre stage in Tripura?s politics with the election to the Autonomous District Council (ADC) less than two months away.

The ADC poll has been scheduled for the first week of March. The Left Front government as well as the Movement for Kokborok, a newly formed organisation, are holding a series of programmes to focus on the growth of the language over the past 26 years since it was recognised as an official language by a government notification on January 19, 1979.

While the ruling party is focusing on the role played by it to develop the tribal language, the organisation stresses the ?apathy and lack of farsightedness? of the Left Front in its language policy.

Addressing a recent seminar in the Agartala Press Club, leading tribal intellectual and professor of Tripura University, Sukhendu Debbarma, blamed the state government for ?trying to impose a script from above and failure to formulate a proper language policy to enable tribal students to study in their mother tongue in schools?.

?The Mizo, Khasi, Naga and Garo languages have prospered by adopting the Roman script but here the government is trying to impose on us the modified Bengali script,? he said, adding that the matter be left to specialists in language and Kokborok-speaking intellectuals.

Poet Nanda Kumar Debbarma, who presided over the function, sought an open debate on the issue.

Senior INPT leader and MLA Nagendra Jamatya, who is also a writer in Bengali and Kokborok, said the issue of Kokborok language and its development was correlated with the larger issue of Tripuri nationalism.

Poet Chandra Kanta Murasingh, who is known to be pro-Left and winner of the prestigious Bhasa Samman award conferred by the Sahitya Akademi, also criticised the government?s education policy for tribal students.