People's Democracy

TRIPURA ADC SESSION

  INPT Launches Attack On CPI(M) Members

IN addition to unleashing vengeful violence on ordinary activists and supporters of the CPI(M) and their family members since the electoral rout the Congress-INPT combine suffered and the massive mandate the Left Front got in the February 26 assembly elections in Tripura, the INPT, that is the political mask of the outlawed extremist organisation NLFT, organised physical assaults on the opposition CPI(M) members on March 21 during the ADC’s budget session, throwing to the wind all parliamentary norms. Even the only female member of the ADC, nominated by the governor, was not spared. Currently, it is the INPT that controls the Tripura Tribal Areas  Autonomous District Council (ADC).

After the question hour on March 21, in the very first half on the first day of the ADC budget session, the ADC chairman gave the go-ahead for a private member’s motion moved by a member of the treasury benches. As soon as the copy of the motion, which charged the Left Front with post-poll violence in objectionable and unparliamentary words, reached the opposition leader, Radhacharan Debbarma of the CPI(M), he expressed strong resentment and protest over the motion, dubbing it as absolutely untenable and designed to mislead the house and the people. The entire opposition as well as independent and nominated members joined the protest in a body. Yet the chairman kept insisting on going ahead with the motion. The opposition members then tore off its copies.  

Immediately thereafter, members of the treasury benches rushed towards the opposition and, in a desperately aggressive manner, broke the cordon the watch-and-ward staff had formed by the time. An INPT member lifted a stenographer’s chair and attacked the opposition members with it. He also snatched the pair of spectacles from a member’s eyes and smashed it. Yet another INPT member physically grappled with the only ADC female member Sumitra Debbarma, snatched her handbag, and also picked up a glass item from a table and threw it at opposition members. The situation cooled down only after the opposition members staged a walk out and the chairman announced the suspension of Radhacharan Debbarma for the day. The chief executive member then tabled the budget and supplementary budget in the absence of the entire opposition. The chairman, however, took no action against the INPT members who indulged in rowdy behaviour on the day. 

Later, speaking to the newsmen in his chamber, Debbarma vehemently condemned the physical assault on the members, including the said female member. He said the private member’s motion, which was moved after muzzling the opposition’s motion against the US attack on Iraq, contained an absolute falsehood. The fact is that about 2,500 CPI(M) supporting families had been driven away from their hearth and home by the vengeful violence of INPT activists and the NLFT and BNCT extremists after they were driven to despair and desperation by their electoral rout and the victory of the Left Front in the assembly elections. Debbarma also told newsmen that it was the ADC chairman who had masterminded the rowdyism of the INPT members against the opposition members in the ADC. He also said the opposition would think of participation or non-participation in ADC sessions in case the chairman fails to fulfil their demand for adequate protection in the ADC premises.

In contrast to the INPT behaviour in the ADC, stood the Left Front’s behaviour in the budget session of the assembly where chief minister Manik Sarkar voiced the newly formed Left Front government’s fervent call to the opposition Congress-INPT combine for constructive criticism of any defects of the ruling front.

Later, on March 24, when the opposition leader Radhacharan Debbarma demanded that the ADC condemn the March 21 incidents of physical assault on opposition members including the only female member, the chairman disallowed the demand. In the midst of subsequent altercations between the ruling party and the opposition on this issue, all on a sudden, an executive member hurled a microphone alongwith sound box at opposition members. Another told the opposition leader to “get out.” An INPT member raised a stenographer’s chair to attack opposition members with, but was deterred by the watch-and-ward staff. When the chairman tried to run the business of the house amid the opposition’s protest, the opposition members staged a walkout.

At the beginning of the second half of the day’s session, the opposition leader again raised the demand for condemnation of the March 21 incidents, and the chairman again rejected it. While female member Sumitra Debbarma was voicing her protest, a rowdy INPT member hurled obscene abuses on her followed by still more obscene invectives from the mouth of an executive member. Even the opposition leader’s demand for expunging the unparliamentary words from the house proceedings was rejected by the chairman. Then the opposition members walked out once again, shouting slogans against the chairman. The supplementary budget was then passed in the absence of the opposition.

It will be mentioned here that since the INPT usurped the ADC with the help of NLFT guns in the May 2000 ADC elections, it has been squandering the ADC funds sanctioned by the state government in unbridled corruption, and for sponsoring the extremists, while stalling the development activities in ADC areas, and thereby hitting the backward tribals hard. It is with a view to suppressing the statistics of such shameless siphoning off of the ADC funds, coupled with the INPT miscreants’ and NLFT militants’ vengeful barbaric violence on CPI(M) activists and supporters, that the ruling INPT has adopted the strategy of keeping the opposition off the ADC session.

Meanwhile, in an extremist raid at Chandraicherra village near Ambassa, headquarters of Dhalai district, on March 24 night, three houses were set aflame and Smt Swapna Debroy, sister of a CPI(M) activist, was grievously injured in extremist gunfire. She was rushed to the G B Hospital, Agartala, where she succumbed to her injury next morning. (INN)