AGARTALA: As part of boosting tourism in

, BJP-IPFT government has allocated 14.22 acres of land to construct replica of 51 Shaktipeeths. The state government has formulated a project under Centre's Prasad scheme.

Officials said besides renovating existing tourism infrastructures, several steps have been taken by the state government to attract international tourists at an affordable cost. The department of tourism has recently started a helicopter service to Devatamura hill range and Unokoti archaeological site which is famous for huge-rock cut sculptures of 15th century to facilitate aerial views of the site.

The Shaktipeeth temples have been set up in 51 locations of Asia as per the Hindu mythology. However, people of the country could hardly visit the temples. In this backdrop, chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb has mooted the idea to construct all

in Fulkumari village of

Udaipur

, close to Mata Tripureswari temple - one of the Shaktipeeth.

Out of the 51 Shaktipeeths, 38 are in India, six in

, three in Nepal, two in Pakistan and one each in Tibet and in Sri Lanka

The minister said a sum of Rs 99.59 crore had been sanctioned for Tripura in 2015-16 financial year under Swadesh Darshan Project and Rs 74.15 crore was released. However, an amount of Rs 65 crore has been sanctioned in 2018-19 fiscal year for development of tourism in Tripura under the same project

"The Tourism department has prepared a preliminary project report of Rs 44 crore for construction of the replicas of the 51 Shaktipeeths and has sent the proposal to XV Finance Commission for consideration for funding the project and hopeful we shall get the allocation," he mentioned.

He said tourism department has introduced weekly helicopter service from this month - Tripura Hawai Safar, which is now available only on Sunday for tourists to get an aerial view of rock-cut carvings at Devatamura and Unokoti.

The government has undertaken project to start cottages in Mandirghat of Dumbur lake and make all other forest guest houses open for the tourists stay, which was not available. The previous government had built more than a hundred of guest house in significant locations and beautiful landscape but they were not allowed to common people for night stay.