People's Democracy

LEADERS of Tripura’s Left Front have fervently urged upon the urban people of the state to build upon the front’s landslide victory in the recent civic polls, in order to launch a prolonged and pitched battle for peace and prosperity in the state and win over more and more sections of the people from the enemy camp. The front leaders issued this call at the massive victory rallies held all over Tripura to celebrate the tremendous victory of the front and total rout of opposition parties in elections to the Agartala Municipality and Nagar Panchayats on December 16.

After the final results were declared on December 18, all Nagar Panchayat areas began to reverberate with massive victory rallies, signaling the state’s steadfast participation in the ongoing countrywide consolidation of the third alternative.

For the Left Front’s central victory rally in Agartala on December 22, rapturous people reached the Rabindra Satabarshiki Bhawan compound in the form of long, serpentine queues. Vibrant with ecstasy and exuberance, these queues displayed a high degree of discipline. Waving flags and festoons, they started a little before 3 p m, with the elected members of Agartala municipal council in the vanguard, and headed for the Rabindra Satabarshiki Bhawan, accompanied by the sound of bands, drums and synthesisers. Young men and women, mothers carrying babies in their arms, toiling masses, motor workers, hawkers, lawyers in uniform, in a word all sections of the people, came to participate in the victory rally, making the rally site inadequate to accommodate the people.

Before the public meeting, the assembled people took out the front’s victory procession from Rabindra Bhawan at about 4 p m, and paraded all the main thoroughfares with jubilation as well as resolution, chanting slogans about achieving the Left Front’s goal in the teeth of conspiracies. As soon as the head of the procession reached Rabindra Bhawan again, the meeting started with CPI leader Sunit Dasgupta in the chair.

Addressing the rally, main speaker and Left Front convenor, Baidyanath Majumdar, urged the people to forge still stronger unity of the working masses and strengthen the Left and democratic forces wherever they are weak. He urged the elected members of Agartala municipal council to sincerely and seriously set about their task to develop Tripura and to win over such sections of the working masses as are still in the enemy camp due to delusion. It is thus that the massive mandate to the front can be consolidated for the strenuous struggle ahead, he concluded.

At the victory rally in Agartala, Majumdar also announced the election of Sankar Das and Bhubaneswari Deb Barma as chairperson and vice-chairperson respectively of the Agartala municipal council. Besides, Prabir Chakraborty, Sudhir Chandra Majumdar and Kalipada Bhattacharya are now the chairpersons-in-council. The newly elected members and functionaries were later sworn in on December 26 at Agartala Town Hall.

It will be recalled that the Left Front won the Agartala municipal council and 12 Nagar Panchayats statewide in the December 16 civic polls, considerably increasing its percentage share of votes over that in the 1995 elections. Not to speak of others who contested, even the Congress and Trinamul Congress fared miserably in the polls. The Left Front wrested from the Congress the Agartala municipal council and Amarpur Nagar Panchayat in South Tripura --- the only two civic bodies in which the Left Front was defeated in 1995. (INN)