People's Democracy

Combine Resorts To Slandering CPI(M)

EVEN as the CPI(M) has been persistently putting up its pressing plea to the Election Commission for effectively countering the naked nexus of the Congress-INPT combine with the armed and outlawed NLFT extremists who are busy unleashing a campaign of terror in Tripura, the heinous combine has adopted, as a cover-up, a strategy of slander against the Left Front and the state government. The Congress-INPT combine’s stratagem is, of course, a desperate diversionary design to doom to failure any endeavour of the Election Commission towards ensuring free and fair elections as well as peaceful electioneering in the state. It is also an attempt to foil the Tripura people’s determination to dump into the dustbin of history those who are diabolically dealings in death.

In a fax message sent to the chief election commissioner on February 7, the CPI(M)’s state secretary Baidyanath Majumder gave, with reference to his February 4 letter to the chief election commissioner, elaborate information about the incidents of killings and intimidation of voters at gun point, carried out in the meantime by the NLFT extremists and their BNCT associates on behalf of the Congress-INPT combine. In his letter dated February 4, Majumder had said that most reprehensible in this respect was the way the Congress-INPT leaders were misleading the people as well as the Election Commission in a bid to cover up their barbaric crimes, by misrepresenting the murdered CPI(M) activists as supporters or cadres of the combine.

Apprising the commission, through his February 7 letter, of several specific incidents in which extremists have killed or injured CPI(M) activists and supporters and arsoned their belongings between February 3 and 6, Baidyanath Majumder made a special mention of the expulsion of an entire neighborhood of Natun Dalapatipara under Gandachhara subdivision in Dhalai District, comprising 49 families (100 persons as least), from their hearth and home by the NLFT-BNCT extremists on February 6. This entire operation of vacating a village was aided and abetted by the INPT candidate from Raima Valley constituency in Gandachhara. Here the INPT nominee is its own general secretary, Rabindra Debbarma, who is posing a great threat not only to the conduct of free and fair polls but also to rehabilitation of the displaced persons as well as to peace and harmony in an absolutely open and inaccessible area adjoining the Bangladesh border where 9 jawans of the Indian territorial army lost their lives in an extremist ambush on October 9 last. Having pointed this out, Majumder stressed the urgent necessity for the Election Commission to wake up the union home ministry to its bounden duty of combating the armed NLFT extremists who are openly involved in the electoral fray on behalf of the Congress-INPT combine. It means that the union home ministry must reinforce the security forces and effectively seal the border before the state goes to the polls on February 26.

Majumder also called for action against such candidates of the combine as are making use of extremists for their campaign of killing and intimidating the voters for electoral gains. These include the abovementioned Rabindra Debbarma in Raima Valley, Nagendra Jamatia in Ampinagar under Amarpur subdivision of South Tripura, and Rajwswar Debbarma of Takarjala under Bishalgarh subdivision in West Tripura.

Incidentally, addressing a press conference on internal security held in Delhi on February 9, chief minister Manik Sarkar forcefully demanded that the centre must view the outlawed NLFT extremists’ blatant bid to assume office by proxy, by hijacking the Tripura assembly polls as gunpoint, not just as a victory or defeat of a political party but as a grave conspiracy to destabilise democracy in the country and its sovereignty. He urged the centre to assume exactly the same role in the Tripura assembly elections as it had in the Jammu & Kashmir elections.

Meanwhile, with a view to diluting and diverting the people’s sense of intense resentment and repugnance towards to the Congress-INPT combine’s campaign of terror with the direct help of extremists, who have brutally killed 27 CPI(M) activists and supporters to date since the announcement of poll schedule on January 11, the heinous alliance has hatched a conspiracy to step up its slander campaign against  the CPI(M). As a part of this plot, on February 7, unlicensed small firearms with 20 rounds of bullets were put in a packet and cleverly planted in a rented motor vehicle in which a member of the CPI(M)’s Kailashahar divisional secretariat was travelling from Agartala to Kailashahar in North Tripura, taking campaign materials with him. As soon as the CRPF held him on his way, on a tip-off about illegal carriage of arms, Congress leaders at several places including Kailashahar launched a severe slander campaign against the CPI(M). At the same time, acting as unofficial organs of the Congress-INPT combine, certain local dailies too started screaming with banner headlines.

In a press conference held at the party’s state headquarters on February 8 afternoon, the party’s spokesman and state secretariat member Gautam Das asserted that the reality of such a heinous conspiracy could not but come to light very soon. He added that such conspiracies cannot succeed in stemming the statewide surge of the people in favour of the Left Front and the CPI(M) which have been fighting a unique ideological war against the fascist, fissiparous forces, at the cost of immense sacrifices and bereavement, for the sake of democracy and development in Tripura. (INN)