Agartala: The Tripura United Indigenous Returnees People’s Council (TUIRPC), an umbrella of the 48 different smaller returnee bodies on Saturday filed a complaint against the Tripura Board of Secondary Education (TBSE) president, Dr Dhananjoy Ganchoudhury and the TBSE secretary for their alleged misbehaviour with delegation, police said.

According to the complaint filed at the New Capital Complex (NCC) police station, the board officials misbehaved with the delegation who went to meet them, seeking to allow students appearing for the board examinations to write their Kokborok paper in Roman script.

“We are examining the details of the complaint. No FIR [first information report] has been lodged till now,” said West Tripura superintendent of police Kiran Kumar.

The Class 12 and Class 10 board examinations conducted by the TBSE will start on March 1 and 2, respectively.

Ganchoudhury had previously said that the students should use Bengali script for Kokborok paper stating that the board is not well equipped to examine papers if students write answers in Roman script.

“If the students write the Kokborok exam in Bengali script, then it will be easier for the board examiners to evaluate the answers. If they write in Roman script, it will be difficult for us to evaluate their papers,” the TBSE chief had said.

The opposition TIPRA Motha party also protested against Ganchoudhury’s comments and demanded that the students be allowed to take Kokborok exams in Roman script.

On Saturday, TIPRA Motha founder and president Pradyot Kishore Manikya Debbarma attacked Ganchoudhury over the script controversy. He had threatened to retaliate if the TBSE tried to force students to write the Kokborok paper in Bengali script.

Ganchoudhury had earlier said that the state government already has sent a proposal about the choice of scripts in Kokborok to the Centre and Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) but the state has received no decision on the issue yet.

The issue was raised in the state assembly last year and in the winter sessions held this January. In the winter assembly session, TIPRA Motha leader Animesh Debbarma advocated allowing the students to write their answer scripts in TBSE-conducted examinations as they prefer.

Following the discussions and pressure from the opposition party leaders in the assembly, chief minister Dr Manik Saha gave assurance to grant provisions for writing Kokborok answer scripts in both Bengali and Roman scripts.

Two commissions led by former minister Shyama Charan Tripura and linguist Pabitra Sarkar recommended the Roman script.