CPI(M) team meets Tripura CM, demands end of terror on party

A delegation of opposition CPI(M) met Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb Saturday and sought his intervention to stop alleged terror unleashed by the ruling BJP-IPFT activists on left party workers.

Over 7,000 workers of various left parties in Tripura were forced to flee their homes due to large-scale political violence during the last eight months since the BJP-Indigenous People's Front of Tripura government came to power, senior party leader Badal Choudhury claimed.

"More than 300 party and frontal organization offices were demolished saying they were illegally constructed on government land," Choudhury alleged in a press conference.

"Opposition MLAs, ex-ministers are not provided police security while visiting interior locations for political activities. When the Left Front was in power the right to perform political activities of the opposition parties were not hindered any way," he said.

Choudhury said the delegation sought intervention of the chief minister, who also holds the home portfolio, so that effective administrative and political measures are taken to ensure that opposition party offices in private land could function freely.

The delegation also submitted to Deb a list of 94 CPI(M) party offices built on private lands.

The CM was also requested by the CPI(M) to provide security escort to opposition legislators and former ministers during their visits outside Agartala for political activities.

"The chief minister assured us to take all possible steps in this regard. We shall wait for a month to watch what measures were taken in this regard," he said.

Besides Chowdhury, Lok Sabha MP Jitendra Chaudhury and former ministers Manik Dey and Tapan Chakraborty were members of the delegation that called on Deb.

The Bharatiya Janata Party and its ally, the IPFT, scripted history in March winning a two-thirds majority in the Tripura legislative assembly, ending the 25-year reign of the Left Front led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist).