Students should raise voice against curtailment of right to expression: Tripura CM

Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar, who was among senior students in an engineering institute, said that a sorry state of affairs is going on in the country for some time, especially in the union government-run institutes and universities, where the freedom of expression is being curtailed and against which they should raise their voice.

Sarkar, who was addressing the students of National Institute of Technology (NIT) Agartala after inaugurating the first supercomputer of the state here, said, "A sorry state of affair is that in our country for several months we are facing very rough and negative weather particularly with regard to this idea of freedom to expression. What happened in IIT Madras, Central University recently and the impulse is still going on in the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi."

"Similar types of problem is there in the Allahabad University...a section of people belonging to our society are trying to impose their ideas, their faith, and their philosophy arbitrarily. In computer a word is used superimposition, if you want to superimpose your thinking that will not be accepted by the common and courageous people," he added.

Sarkar viewed that students are integral part of the society and hence should not keep themselves alienated from what is happening around them.

"A section of our people is trying to suppress, you should not put into that. You shall have to think about all these stages, if you keep yourself alienated about all these aspects, what is going on in your country then nobody will bother for you. You are part and parcel of the society, you are integral part. What is right, what is wrong, you have to debate. That is what I have mentioned, freedom of speech, right to express one's mind, thoughts, ideas. You may accept it, you may not accept it, and this is democracy. This is what is curtailed in our country and very dangerous. That is not success of any ruler, that is weakness of any ruler," said the Chief Minister.

Sarkar, in presence of Director NIT Agartala Prof. Gopal Mugeraya and C-DAC Executive Director Dr Hemant Darbari, inaugurated the C-DAC & AEC Param Supercomputing Facility, a joint collaboration of the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing and the NIT.

The facility will house the latest offering from C-DAC's labs, Param Shavak, which is in tabletop form and considered one of the world's most compact supercomputers.