PRAGOTI

Agartala, February 19: Dubbing the Congress parties poll-manifesto as a
document of deceit and disinformation, the CPI(M) leaders are giving
statewide a clarion call for 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 6^th
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 power-hungriness 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, veteran leader and 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, 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 youths 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 4 such mixed population
constituencies at Sonamura, West Tripura Biman Bose gave a fervent call
for the people of Tripura to reinforce the Left Front Government as the
light-house of peace and progress on the strong-tossed sea of these
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 as a result. He cited the
instance of yesterday’s hiking of petroleum prices as also of the past
experience of the barbaric and semi fascist regime of Siddartha Sankar
Roy in West Bengal and of the Congress TUJS combine in Tripura, both
brought in to being by the Congress party through collusion with
extremists. 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 to set 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 for the people not only to form the 6th Left
Front Government but ushering 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 utilization 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 its, he pointed out.

In his address, Khagen Das affirmed that the people of Tripura are
unitedly 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 destabilization and
deprivation of the people.

Meanwhile, at a press conference held on February 13 in the CPI(M) state
headquarter, the party state secretariat member Gautam Das dubbed the
Congress party’s poll manifesto as document of deceit and disinformation
and also called into question External Affair 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 with 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 informed the
press that the INPT has already employed the NLFT with fund 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 for 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, during the press conference on the occasion of
the issue of the Congress party’s poll manifesto, Gautam Das cited
statistical facts and figures to prove that it is the five Left Front
Government’s in Tripura that have consistently and ceaselessly been
pressing ahead with their massive multifarious development process
statewide, while the Congress party, whether in or out of power, since
independence at the sate and the centre, has consistently and
continuously been meting out deception and deprivation to Tripura and
its people. The poll manifesto released on 23 February is, therefore,
stale document of the same process of deceit and deprivation being
carried out by the Congress party for decades, he maintained.

PETROLEUM PRICE HIKE

Even as the petroleum price hike has added fuel to the flame of the
state electorate’s raging resentment against the pre-eminently
anti-people and anti-patriotic policies of the Congress party,
extremists in Tripura has supplemented their violence with vilification
targeted against the CPI(M). the Left Front’s climatic campaign
statewide barely a seek ahead of the 10^th Assembly Election, is
nevertheless surging forward with the overwhelmingly and spontaneously
massive participation of thousands of people and with the Congress party
heavy-weights drawing almost a blank in their bid to boost its
ever-sagging poll campaign in Tripura.

The entire state was seething with protest demonstrations yesterday
through meetings and marches of hundreds of people organized by each and
every unit of the CPI(M) against the nonchalantly anti-people step of
the Congress-led UPA Government at the centre having hiked the petroleum
prices from the previous midnight in utter disregard of its unbearably
adverse impact of a remote landlocked state like Tripura. At places the
protest against this latest blow on the people from the ruling class
alongside strident demand for revoking it, was raised from the ongoing
Left Front poll campaign programmes themselves.

Meanwhile, a statement recently released in the name of ATTF(TPDF), one
of the separatist armed militant outfits in Tripura says 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 yesterday, 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 his
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 campaigns 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. Yesterday’s meetings and rallies all over the state were
addressed among others by CPI(M) Polit Bureau Member and West Bengal
state secretary Biman Bose, veteran and Tripura state secretary
Baidyanath Majumder, Polit Bureau Member and Chief Minister Manik
Sarkar, Polit Bureau Member Brinda Karat, Central Committee Member Bijan
Dhar, State Secretariat Member Gautam Das, Bajuban Reang, Badal
Chowdhury and Narayan Kar.

In his address, 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
taking 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 Minister in
the country, the people of Tripura shall usher in a new era by forming
the 6^th Left Front Government with a most massive mandate and
frustrating with extreme alertness the kingpin of conspiracies for poll
falsification now stalking the state.

In her address Brinda Karat voiced her belief that the seasonal birds
like Congress heavyweights flying into Tripura are now smelling 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 for 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 election, 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 6^th Left
Front Government with a most 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.