AGARTALA, July 31 (TIWN): Number of schools in Tripura have declared holiday as the school buses of most of the schools in Tripura are unable to provide service due to lack of fuel in the state.

The unexpected holiday was also followed by the riot spreaded in the state due to ten petrol crisis in isolated parts of   Agartala city.

The severe petrol and diesel crisis that hit Tripura the last two months have now started affecting school bus services as most of the CBSE-run schools have decided to curtail number of buses to cope up with the crisis. The crisis is due to the poor Assam-Agartala National Highway road condition which has hindered the supply of essential commodities and fuel.

Pranabananda Vidyamandir Authority has declared holidays for two days, i.e., on Friday and Saturday as the buses cannot pick up students due to the petrol crisis. Other schools from Bharatiya Vidya Bhawan, Don Bosco and Sri Krishna Mission are providing only one bus per route.

Apart from schools, the newspaper industry is also facing threat as trucks carrying newsprint are stranded at Assam’s Lowerpoa area. Circulation of the newspapers has come down and few leading newspapers have stopped publishing supplementary pages.

The supply of essentials and fuel continues to be hit badly in Tripura for about two months now even as the state government has repeatedly sought the central government’s intervention to restore its lifeline – National Highway-8 (44) – which has been badly damaged in adjacent Assam.

Due to heavy rains and poor maintenance, the NH-8(44) has turned into a muddy field with knee-deep mud at Lowerpoah in southern Assam’s Karimganj district adjoining northern Tripura, thus almost cutting off Tripura by surface communication.

Petrol price in the state hit Rs 300 per litre in black market.

Several hundred goods-laden trucks and oil tankers carrying fuel from Guwahati are stuck in Assam’s Karimganj, while the situation worsened as the train services between Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur and southern Assam and the rest of India became irregular for more than two months due to damage to the railway tracks in Assam’s Dima Hasao district.

Following the shortage caused by the disruption of both rail and road traffic, prices of fuel and essential commodities has increased to a large extent in Tripura.