AGARTALA, September 28 (TIWN): To boost Tripura’s connectivity with the rest of India and the outer world, Chief Minister Manik Sarkar has proposed an additional National Highway (NH) which will run from Teliamura to Sabroom via Amarpur. While speaking on the occasion of World Tourism Day at Sukanta Academy auditorium, yesterday he also expressed his willingness to come up with an alternate road which will connect Tripura and Mizoram.

He expressed an intention to make the communication facilities more viable and affordable for the tourists the minister highlighted the importance of communication besides taking on the state run telecom service provider BSNL. “The service of BSNL is very poor while 139 villages of Tripura are still to be provided with mobile services”, he further added.

Nearly 3, 75,000 tourists visited Tripura last year where 15000 were foreign tourists. The same had generated revenue of Rs. 1.5 crore. A new revamped website of Tripura tourism was launched by the Chief Minister which will enable the tourists not only to have a sound knowledge about the state Tripura but also making online booking and reservation of flights and hotels.

 The minister was sounded too ambitious by putting tourism industry over the other industries by setting up some factories or whatsoever. “Five years ago we were lacking infrastructural facilities as regards tourism and I believe by making some websites, hoarding and advertisement the tourism industry will not scale new heights”, he further added.

Besides devising an internal expanded market for tourism industry here in  Tripura,  the Chief Minister has asked the concerned department to work on emerging and more broader areas of modern day tourism like religious tourism,, education tourism, health tourism, cultural tourism and eco tourism. Tourism Minister Ratan Bhoumik and Secretary (Tourism) Asutosh Jindal were also present in the programme.