People's Democracy

TRIPURA

Rahul’s Aspersion on Left Front Govt

Haripada Das

ON November 10, Rahul Gnadhi,  general secretary of the Congress party and one projected as the future prime minister of India, made a whirlwind visit to Tripura for four hours, with an eye to the Tripura Vidhan Sabha elections in 2013. Quite obviously, the mission of his visit was to mend the divided house of the state Congress and boost up the morale of his party workers. He addressed two rallies, one at Kailashahar in North Tripura and other at Udaipur in South Tripura, conspicuously avoiding the capital city of Agartala.

As for the people of Tripura, they have the experience of what canard his father, late Shri Rajiv Gandhi, spread in 1988. As is well known today, while he castigated the Left Front government for its ‘failure’ to protect the life and property of the people against the TNV’s killing spree, he did make a green signal to the TNV supremo Bijoy Kumar Hrangkhawl  to continue with its dastardly killings so that the Congress could reap electoral benefits. When Zoing, a Mizoram fortnightly, printed the letters involving a secret deal Mr Gandhi and Mr Hrangkhawl, nobody had the guts to contradict the fact. And now the falsehood Rahul Gandhi resorted to while in Tripura on November 10, does indicate that he is not only a worthy son of his father but may even surpass him in political foul-play. 

Some of Mr Rahul Gandhi’s shameless lies are as below ---

1) The central allocations to the state are being used in construction of party offices and not for development purposes.

2) The Left Front government in Tripura  is not implementing the Forest Rights Act (FRA) for an upliftment of the tribal people.

3) The condition of roads is bad; supply of drinking water and electricity service are absent.

4) The Left Front government is not making recruitments to fill up the 50,000 vacant posts in the state government departments.

5) State government employees are deprived of enhanced pay at par with the Sixth Central Pay Commission.

And so on.

It is an admitted fact in all circles including the various central government departments that Tripura has made a spectacular progress in all basic sectors like food production, health services, road communication, housing, and development of the tribal, SC and minority people. This, however, has been despite the fact that the Left Front government has to work with serious limitations and hurdles, and in particular the financial blockade imposed by the centre through the 13th Finance Commission’s recommendations. So the Left Front government pays utmost attention to utilising every paisa it raises in the state or gets from the centre.  

In a strongly worded rejoinder next day, the CPI(M)’s Tripura  state secretariat condemned the basketful of lies coming from none other than the general secretary of the Congress party which is the leading partner of the UPA-2 government. The statement said so far as the FRA’s implementation is concerned, the central government has openly admitted that Tripura tops the list in the country. Almost half of the plan allocation is earmarked for tribal development though the tribals form 30 per cent of the state population. The central government itself rewarded Tripura for best performance in food production among the ‘C’ category states. According to the census report, Tripura has the third best position in literacy. Rural people in the state enjoy almost same services as urban people in regard to road communication, drinking water supply, use of electricity etc. Thus, according to the centre’s admission, Tripura stands among the states which are identified as having made commendable endeavour in human development and upgraded the living standard of the people. The Planning Commission of India put Tripura at the top of the North Eastern states in infrastructure development. All these achievements of Tripura are well supported by data from various government departments in New Delhi.  Rahul Gandhi could have known all this with only minimal effort but, instead, he preferred to malign the Left Front government with his falsehoods and has thus exposed his ignorance, the statement said.

‘Government funds are being siphoned off to communist pockets to construct big buildings,’ was Mr Gandhi’s another detestable slander that mismatches with his status. The expenditure account of the state government is audited by the CAG which has admired its transparency and the central government accorded incentives to the state for several years for creditable fund management. Mr Rahul may conveniently ignore these facts, but his absurd anti-communist slur is very much aimed at diverting the people’s attention from several notorious scams like the 2-G spectrum scam etc, involving lakhs of crores of rupees. It is anybody’s guess that the CPI(M) raises its fund through voluntary contributions from the common people. The state secretariat challenged Mr Gandhi to submit any proof in support of his slanderous allegations if he has any.

It is true that the state government could not pay its employees salaries and DA at par with the Sixth Central Pay Commission’s recommendations. Also, the government could not fill up about 26,000 vacant posts due to the financial constraint that has been created by grossly depriving the state of its dues by the 13th Finance Commission because of its political bias. But, the CPI(M) statement asked, why Mr Gandhi did not refer to the 44 lakh vacancies in various central government departments waiting to be filled up for decades?    

As for the call of uprooting the communists from the state, the people of Tripura will certainly give a befitting reply to it in the 2013 assembly elections. The people are not going to tolerate ant attempt to restore the semi-fascist rule that late Shri Rajiv Gandhi imposed on the state in 1988 by falsifying the verdict in collusion with the armed forces and the TNV killers. Those dark days are still in the memory of the Tripura people, the statement concluded.