People's Democracy

TRIPURA

Election Campaign Intensifies

Subrata Chakraborty

DUBBING the Congress party's poll-manifesto as a document of deceit and disinformation, the CPI(M) leaders gave a clarion call to the people to consolidate their collective move to defeat the Congress party, allied with the outlawed extremists' political wing INPT, into the ballot box of the 10th Assembly election in Tripura , with strong confidence without a shred of complacence. While the Congress leaders are waxing eloquent in a vain bid to conceal their party's anti-people and anti-patriotic polices and actions, the spontaneously spirited upsurge of the masses, evident in the Left Front's overwhelming rallies, meetings and marches, amply indicates that the people deem their participation in them as part and parcel of their strident struggle for peace and progress by forming the pro-people sixth Left Front government in Tripura as the vital weapon of their struggle.

Incidentally, the Congress party's poll manifesto was released on February 13, with plethora of pre-posterous pledges designed to cover up its hunger for power and mislead the masses, in the face of the political wilderness it has been languishing in ever since the 2003 Assembly elections in Tripura.

Left Front's numerous public meetings and rallies were addressed by CPI(M) leaders including the Party's Polit Bureau member and West Bengal secretary Biman Bose, Tripura secretary Baidyanath Majumder, Polit Bureau member and chief minister Manik Sarkar, Polit Bureau member Brinda Karat, Central Committee member Subhashini Ali, Central Committee member and state Left Front convenor Khagen Das, Central Committee member Bijan Dhar and state secretariat members Gautam Das, Bajuban Reang and Narayan Kar. On the other hand, Congress leader and union minister Santosh Mohan Deb set foot on Tripura on February 14, 2008, reviving the people's memory of his nightmarish unleashing of vote-robbery decades ago in Tripura.

Despite the present scarcity of motor vehicles statewide, due to Election Commission' requisition in large numbers of vehicles on election duty, all the meetings and rallies of the Left Front were overwhelmingly attended by men and women, young and old, tribal and non-tribal. Of course, most conspicuous was the vibrant and scintillating pre-eminence of the youth creating the colourful combination of red flags and red caps, vest aprons with the lust greenery of the landscapes. Also remarkable was the massive presence of the minority Muslim community at places.

Addressing the Left Front's rally of four such mixed population constituencies at Sonamura, West Tripura, Biman Bose gave a fervent call to the people of Tripura to reinforce the Left Front government as the light-house of peace and progress in this crisis ridden country. He lashed out at the extreme degradation and deceptiveness of the 122 year old Congress party allying with the political mass of the imperialists sponsored armed extremists in the name of combating insurgency, and implementing the imperialist perceptions in the name of solving economic crisis, all in a blatant disregard of the pitiable plight of the people. He voiced his strong conviction that the people of Tripura shall express through their vigorous verdict in favour of the Left Front their collective contempt of the Congress party that signals its support to the separatists and connivance at their atrocities through electoral alliances with their political wing INPT.

Addressing the Left Front's massive election rally at Subroom, South Tripura , Brinda karat pointed out that while the Left Front government in Tripura is putting forward the state as a model of unity and integrity by returning the misguided militants to the mainstream through its three-pronged ceaseless struggle of ideological, administrative and developmental measures, at the cost of numerous martyrdoms, the Congress party is deviating from the mainstream of democracy and joining hands with armed extremists to assuage its avarice for power. She extended her revolutionary greeting especially to the women of Tripura for courageously combating insurgency, and also applauded the Left Front government in Tripura for setting a unique example in the country's male dominated society by providing women with social security. Lashing out at the Congress party's deceptiveness and duplicity through its promise of one lakh jobs through recruitment-fair while depriving the people of their livelihood and lakhs of jobs in other states and at the centre, she gave a fervent call to the people not only to form the sixth Left Front government but usher in a new chapter in the history of Tripura and in the struggle for the Left alternative in the country through a most vigorous verdict.

Addressing a number of rallies and meetings, Manik Sarkar lambasted the Congress party's stupid claim that the Left Front government's programmes are propped up by the Congress-led government at the centre. It is the ceaseless pressure on the centre and efficient utilisation of the central funds for a massive development process statewide by the Left Front government that forced the funds out of the reluctant centre which piles up enormous tax from the people but parts with an inadequate share of it for the people, he pointed out.

In his address, Khagen Das affirmed that the people of Tripura are decisively in favour of the Left Front that stands for stability and development while the Congress party is increasingly isolated from the people due to its resorting to destabilisation and deprivation of the people.

Party state secretariat member, Gautam Das in a press conference, called into question External Affairs minister Pranab Mukharjee's justification of his party's electoral alliance with the INPT, the political mask of the NLFT, an outlawed extremist organisation that carries on cross border killings and kidnappings in Tripura from their safe shelters in Bangladesh territory. Referring to the situation resulting from such nefarious nexus, Gautam Das said the INPT has already employed the NLFT with funds from the Congress party to impart arms training in Bangladesh to some new recruits in insurgency who are now being made use of and some of whom have been arrested also for snatching photo-identity cards of CPI(M) supporting voters and for threatening them with dire consequences against voting for the CPI(M). Gautam Das made it clear that while the people shall give the most befitting reply to such blatant use of fissiparous forces, the CPI(M) draws the attention of the Election Commission too for taking appropriate action to enable voters to exercise their franchise in a terror-free atmosphere.

As regards Pranab Mukharjee's statement that Tripura is underdeveloped in the Left Front regime, Gautam Das cited statistical facts and figures to prove that it is the Left Front government's five term rule in Tripura that has consistently and ceaselessly been moving ahead with massive multifarious development processes statewide, while the Congress party, whether in or out of power, since independence, in the state and the centre, has consistently and continuously been meting out deception and deprivation to Tripura and its people.

A statement recently released in the name of ATTF (TPDF), one of the separatist armed militant outfits in Tripura said that certain local committee leaders of the CPI(M) have sought the assistance of the ATTF in connection with this Assembly election. In response to newsmen's query in this regard, CPI(M) state secretariat member Gautam Das trashed such statement as a preposterous falsehood and a politically motivated propaganda designed in vain to mislead the public opinion, especially at a time when the Congress party is increasingly isolated as both supporting and being supported by separatists for narrow and nefarious gains. Far from seeking support of separatist outfits, the CPI(M) is in the front-rank of the struggle to root out all separatism or insurgency from the country including Tripura at the cost of numerous martyrdoms, he affirmed. Several CPI(M) leaders have been killed in extremist attacks from the outlawed ATTF that also kidnapped the present CPI(M) minister Pranab Debbarma and held him hostage for 11 months in the outfit's hideout in Bangladesh territory, he pointed out. The ATTF extremists are now intimidating CPI(M) supporters in certain mixed-populated constituencies and the police have been informed of this by the Party, he added.

Incidentally, extremists of yet another militant outfit BNCT, known to the be B-team of the outlawed extremist organisation NLFT(BM), the underground wing of the Congress party's electoral ally INPT, have carried out snatching of photo identity cards of CPI(M)-supporting voters on five occasions over the past few days at Chawmanu constituency of Dhalai district, besides issuing threatening letters against voting for the CPI(M) instead of the Congress-INPT combine.

Throwing to the winds all such campaign, violence and vilification, the people are forging forward statewide the Left Front's election campaign, not only to return but also reinforce the Left Front government in Tripura. Meetings and rallies all over the state were addressed among others by Biman Bose, Baidyanath Majumder, Manik Sarkar, Brinda Karat, Bijan Dhar, state secretariat members Gautam Das, Bajuban Reang, Badal Chowdhury and Narayan Kar.

Biman Bose said that while Tripura was an obscure and almost unknown state in the country, the ceaseless struggle of the communists since the mid-forties and of the five Left Front governments in the state have uplifted Tripura to a glorious position in the history of the country's movement for democracy and development, peace and progress in every sphere, alongside in the country's ongoing search for a viable Left-secular third alternative. As the entire country is now looking up to Tripura towards fulfillment of the countrymen's hopes and aspirations through reinstallment and reinforcment of the Left Front government led by Manik Sarkar, one of the best ever chief ministers in the country, the people of Tripura shall usher in a new era by forming the sixth Left Front government with a massive mandate and frustrating with extreme alertness the kingpin of conspiracies for poll falsification now stalking the state.

Brinda Karat said the seasonal birds like Congress heavyweights flying into Tripura now smell defeat in store for them, similar to the series of defeat of Congress party in state after state due to its anti-people, pro-imperialist and semi-communal policies and actions despite the electoral thrashings. She gave a fervent call to the people of Tripura to give the Congress party a most befitting rebuff for its blatant bankruptcy revealed in its alliance with armed extremists' political puppet INPT and its latest attack on the people through hike of petroleum prices.

Addressing the meetings and rallies in areas where the people were debarred at extremist gunpoint from exercising their franchise in the 2003 Assembly elections, Manik Sarkar said that stupefied by the state's stability and security, peace and progress at present, the Congress party is frantically grasping the fissiparous forces and does not care a fig for even the unbearable burden thrust, especially on Tripura by the petroleum price hike. He called upon the people to form the sixth Left Front government with a massive mandate with a view to forming the still nebulous third alternative, the only way out of the tremendously complex and critical situation in the country.