The Hindu : Terrorist violence takes centre stage

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Apr 03, 2004

National

National - Elections 2004

Terrorist violence takes centre stage

Both the ruling Left Front and the Opposition are making the extremist issue the central plank of their campaign, writes Sushanta Talukdar.

With Tripura going in for the Lok Sabha polls nearly a year after the Assembly elections, the issue of violence by the banned militant groups, the All Tripura Tiger Force (ATTF) and the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT), has become the focal point of campaigning by political parties in the State.

The ruling CPI (M)-led Left Front, which has been the main target of extremist violence in the State, has made the issue a part of its electioneering to mobilise support of the voters towards building maximum public pressure on both the militant outfits to shun violence and return to the mainstream. It has also decided to win greater public support for its persistent demand to the Centre to put pressure on the Bangladesh Government for disbandment of militant camps in its territory from where the rebels carry out their activities.

While the ATTF has already issued a call for boycott of the April 22 Lok Sabha elections in the State, the NLFT (Biswa Mohan faction) is lying low in the wake of its rival faction led by the vice-president, Nayan Bashi, offering a ceasefire and indicating its willingness to hold peace talks with the Centre and the State Government.

Senior CPI (M) leader and a member of the party's State secretariat, Gautom Das, has alleged that the ATTF `poll boycott' call was aimed at terrorising workers of the ruling party in aid of the Congress candidates. He also alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Nationalist Trinamool Congress combine had struck an electoral alliance with the NLFT-backed Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT) with the tacit understanding of using the extremists to terrorise cadres and supporters of the ruling party ahead of the polls. Das pointed out that the militant outfits always targeted the CPI (M) and said nearly 2,000 leaders, cadres and supporters of the party had been killed in extremist violence in the State since 1980.

Despite the militants' threat, the senior CPI (M) leader was hopeful of getting more votes this time, and claimed that about 20,000 families of supporters of Congress and INPT have shifted their allegiance to the ruling Left Front after the Assembly polls.

The opposition parties, on the other hand, have charged the ruling party with "using the extremist elements" to intimidate their party workers and supporters to win the election. The former Chief Minister and a senior State Congress leader, Samir Ranjan Barman, said that the "nexus of extremist elements with the CPI-M" would be a major election plank of the Congress during the elections. Similarly, the State BJP spokesman, Harihar Debnath, said that the party and its ally, the Trinamool Congress and the INPT would "expose the nexus of the CPM and extremist outfits" during the election campaign.

Das, however, said that the electorate had rejected the "baseless campaign by both the Congress and the BJP" through their support of the Left Front in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections as well as the 2003 Assembly polls. For instance, in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections, the Left Front secured 317553 votes in the Tripura West constituency against 83384 votes polled by the Congress candidate and 174154 votes secured by the BJP, the Tripura Upajati Juba Samaj (TUJS which later became a part of the INPT) and the Trinamool Congress combine.

Over the past year, the pressure mounted by the Left Front Government has led to the surrender of 251 ATTF and NLFT cadres, while 162 hardcore rebels have been killed in about 108 encounters with the security forces.

However, both the militant outfits are continuing with their campaign of killings, abductions and extortion in their areas of domination.

While the Central paramilitary forces and the Tripura State Rifles patrol most of the highways in the State, traffic along the 145 km Agartala-Kumarghat national highway number 44, considered the lifeline of Tripura, is regulated — convoys thrice a day, escorted by security forces as the entire stretch is militant dominated.

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