appointment of the Tripuri kings. Tripura became a princely state during British rule in India. The kings had an estate in British India, known as Tippera district or Chakla Roshanbad (now the Comilla district of Bangladesh), in addition to the independent area known as Hill Tippera, roughly corresponding to the present day Tripura state. Udaipur, in the south of Tripura, was the capital of the kingdom, until the king Krishna Manikya moved the capital to Old Agartala in the 18th century. It was moved to the new city of Agartala in the 19th century. Bir Chandra Manikya (1862–1896) modelled his administration on the pattern of British India, and enacted reforms including the formation of Agartala Municipal Corporation. Post-independence (1947-present) Following the independence of India in 1947, Tippera district – the estate in the plains of British India – became Comilla district of East Pakistan, and Hill Tippera remained under a regency council until 1949. The Maharani Regent of Tripura signed the Tripura Merger Agreement on 9 September 1949, making Tripura a Part C state of India. It became a Union Territory, without a legislature, in November 1956 and an elected ministry was installed in July 1963. It was conferred full statehood in 1971 by the North-Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act, 1971. The geographic partition that coincided with the independence of India resulted in major economic and infrastructural setbacks for the state, as road transport between the state and the major cities of the newly-independent India had to follow a more circuitous route, around East Pakistan. The road distance between Kolkata and Agartala before the partition was less than , and increased to , as the route now avoided East Pakistan. The geopolitical isolation was aggravated by an absence of rail transport. After the partition of India, many Bengali Hindus migrated to Tripura as refugees fleeing religious persecution in Muslim-majority East Pakistan, especially after 1949. Settlement by Hindu Bengalis increased during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971. Parts of the state were shelled by the Pakistan Army during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. Following the war, the Indian government reorganised the North East region to ensure effective control of the international borders – three new states came into existence on 21 January 1972: Meghalaya, Manipur, and Tripura. Before independence, most of the population was indigenous. Ethnic strife between the Tripuri tribe and the predominantly immigrant Bengali community led to scattered violence, and