AGARTALA, March 5: Tripura finance minister Badal Chowdhury today presented a tax-free budget of Rs 2724.97 crore, leaving an "uncovered" deficit of Rs 106.91 crore for the year 2001-2002. Finance secretary Debasish Sarkar said the government would try to augment collection of revenue and launch an austerity drive to slash expenses. The finance minister also presented a supplementary budget of Rs 116 crore to make up for the shortfall in the outgoing financial year's allocation. However, Sarkar claimed that the supplementary budget for the outgoing financial year was tabled because of the...

IMPHAL, March 4: Eight missionary schools located in the valley area are in the throes of an acute crisis as many non local teachers who are serving at the state have started fleeing fearing repercussions from underground organisations. Sources said the demand served on the schools by a particular underground organisation to cough up Rs 2 crore and the failure of the schools to pay the astronomical amount triggered the mass exodus. According to reports received here an underground organisation had served demand notice of Rs 5 lakh on each of the eight missionary schools. This works out to Rs...

GUWAHATI, March 5: Separatist guerrillas have trained their guns on the Catholic Church in Manipur, threatening to bomb at least two of the prestigious schools run by it in capital Imphal. The reason: failure in paying 'taxes' to the rebels. Manipur director-general of police D.S.Grewal, speaking to TheNewspaperToday on Monday, confirmed that the banned People's Liberation Army has slapped a demand of Rs 5 lakh on all the eight schools in Imphal city run by the Catholic Church. The church authorities have expressed their inability to meet the rebels' demand saying the schools they run are non...

DIBRUGARH, March 4: In an unprecedented move, the reception committee of the 66th session of the Asam Sahitya Sabha today was forced by shopkeepers to refund them their application money. The decision to refund the money was taken today after a prolonged and heated debate on the matter. Accordingly, those who applied for restaurants would now get back Rs 2225 each, those who put up tea stalls would be given back Rs 1550 each and those who had put up betelnut stalls at the session venue at Sahityarathi Kshetra would be given back Rs 940 each. It may be recalled that there was chaos in the...

NEW DELHI, March 4: An earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale jolted Northeastern India including Assam and neighbouring Myanmar early today causing panic among the people though there were no reports of any casualty or damage to property. The quake occurred at 4.26 am and had its epicentre on Indo-Myanmar border, Meteorological Department said here. A moderate quake, lasting a few seconds, was experienced in Mizoram, H Lallenmawia, superintending geologist of the Geology and Mining Department, said in Aizawl. An earthquake, the second in the past six days, shook Meghalaya capital...