AGARTALA, Jan 6 (TIWN): Adding another milestone to the history of Tripura, Union Minister of State for Commerce Nirmala Sitharamanon Wednesday inaugurated the LCS at Srimantapur, which is located about 45 km from the state capital, sources said. Chief Minister Manik Sarkar along with other dignitaries remains present there in the programme. However both the Union Minister & Tripura CM jointly inaugurated LCS. Srimantapur is going to take a new form in the export and import business of the country. Multi-facility Land Custom Station (LCS) and Immigration Centre were inaugurated at Srimantapur in Sipahijala district bordering Bangladesh on Wednesday. The LCS is built after spending a huge amount of Rs 16 crore. However, the set up is built on 2.83 acres of land bordering the Comilla district of Bangladesh. On Wednesday, the Union Minister for Industries and Commerce went to the spot by a chopper to inaugurate the newly built LCS and on the same day she is scheduled to leave for Delhi. The LCS is expected to boost the trade between Tripura and Bangladesh. This LCS is almost like an integrated check post having the facilities like weighs bridge, warehouse, computerized immigration system, bank with currency exchange facility among others.

Inaugurating the LCS at Srimantapur Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Nirmala Sitharaman said that Tripura will be the gateway to South-east Asia in the coming days. She said setting up of Land Custom Station along the international border areas in the region would speed up the trade volume in the border trade centres.

Inaugurating the facility, the Minister said the Centre has been taking up development in the North East on a mission mode and arrangements were made for expeditious completion of pending projects in the region.

It is to be mentioned here that Nirmala Sitharaman joined Narendra Modi's ministry in May 2014. Until then, she was working as a part of a team of six spokespersons headed by Ravi Shankar Prasad, for Bharatiya Janata Party.

On May 26, Nirmala Sitharaman was sworn in as Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Ministry of Commerce & Industry, as well as a Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs which fall under the Ministry of Finance headed by Arun Jaitley.

She joined the BJP in 2006 even as her husband Dr. Parakala Prabhakar joined the Prajarajyam party floated by filmstar Chiranjeevi in 2007. While her husband grew disillusioned with Chiranjeevi's party and felt the need to quit the PRP that spoke of social justice. In the early 2000s, Dr Prabhakar was the spokesperson of the Andhra Pradesh unit of the BJP. Meanwhile, Nirmala was slowly gaining in popularity in the BJP. It was during Nitin Gadkari's tenure as BJP president that Nirmala Sitharaman was enlisted as one of the six party spokespersons in March 2010.

Since then, she has been a regular on the news TV channels defending her BJP and its leaders including Narendra Modi. Interestingly, as party spokesperson, she became quite popular in the Modi-ruled Gujarat than in Delhi, where the BJP headquarters is based.