People's Democracy

EVEN as the Congress party quite appropriately gives the impression of turning over a new leaf at the centre, the party is nothing but an incorrigible den of anarchic and anti-social elements at the state level. Rife with rivalries and rowdism the Pradesh Congress has laid bare over the last few days its absolute incompatibility with the ways of democracy and development.

At about 10 pm on May 16, Youth Congress state general secretary Debal Deb was shot dead at the heart of the town by suspected professional killers while he had been riding pillion back home on a motorbike from the state headquarters of the party along with a former NSUI state president and a Pradesh Congress member Biswajit Sen who was also slightly injured in the incident. Acting immediately thereafter, on a tip off the police arrested two youth Congress activists of Agartala who are known to be close lieutenants of the Organisation’s state president and Congress legislator Sudip Barman. The CPI(M) State Secretariat as well as the state government vehemently condemned the assassination of Debal Deb and the police are now at an advanced stage of its all out investigation into the incident which, according to reliable sources of the Pradesh Congress itself, is a sequel to the internecine rivalries, both political and financial between the state secretary and the state president of Youth Congress.

The Pradesh Congress, with a view to shielding its own miscreant members as also to kicking up a now with the ruling Left Front in line with an unprincipled politics of unrest, called a 24-hour Tripura Bandh on May 18 demanding resignation of the chief minister Manik Sarkar. The CPI(M) as well as the state government vehemently opposed the irresponsible Bandh call castigating it as a reprehensible ruse to disrupt the state government’s all out measures on a war footing for combating gastroenteritis and malaria currently raging through certain remote and inaccessible tribal belts of Tripura. The people of Tripura, however, rejected the bandh call maintaining normal public life in almost all spheres on the day.

Again at midday on May 20, a group of Pradesh Congress leaders including its president Birjit Sinha and the State Assembly’s Opposition leader Ratanlal Nath went on a deputation to the Panchayat Election Commissioner at the state Election authority’s office in the Agartala Gurkhabasti Office complex. Alleging that the draft electoral roll recently brought out for the upcoming Panchayat Polls in the state, are entirely faulty, they demanded fresh revision of the rolls without, however, submitting any written memorandum. When the Commissioner requested them to submit specific allegations with documentary evidence if any, for him to take appropriate action, they resorted to an orgy of vandalism in front of him, ransacking his office chamber. When his secretary tried to resist them Birjit Sinha wrenched his wrist, Ratanlal Nath threatened to blow up the office with bombs and Congress legislator Kajal Das even threatened him with death. The Commissioner himself sustained a minor injury in this melee with a glass splinter of broken tabletop sticking into his finger. The Director General of the state Police has been apprised of the incident in detail. The prompt intervention of the office personnel and the police defused the situation.

In a statement yesterday, the CPI(M) State Secretariat vehemently condemned the incident as a pre-planned hooliganism on the part of the Pradesh Congress designed to disrupt the ongoing Panchayat poll process in Tripura. The CPI(M) recalls that apart from the lack of even a single precedence of democratic mode of Panchayat polls during the entire period of Congress regime in Tripura, the Congress-TUJS coalition regime immediately after assuming office through forcible falsification of people’s mandate in 1988, dissolved all democratically elected constitutional bodies in Tripura including the Panchayats and let loose a looting spree on the funds for development of the people. The CPI(M) also recalls the attempt of Congress leaders on the eve of each and every election in the state to set legal hurdles against timely conduct of the poll process by going to Court on baseless allegations. (INN)