AS soon as trends of assembly election results in Tripura showed victory for the BJP-IPFT alliance, the so-called champions of peace and harmony started to reveal their fangs right from the counting halls, particularly in Sonamura. BJP miscreants held up counting of votes in Dhanpur assembly constituency for about 10 hours and tried to push out outgoing Chief Minister and CPI(M) candidate Manik Sarkar from the counting hall with a view to alter the result in their favour at a stage when he was leading by about 6,000 votes from his nearest BJP contestant. But for the extreme endurance and firmness of Sarkar and his election agent, the BJP’s attempt to highjack people’s verdict in its favor did not succeed.

Soon violence spread across the state. Apart from pulling down Lenin’s statues in Belonia and Subroom that stunned the people worldwide, BJP miscreants unleashed attacks on CPI(M) leaders, workers and supporters, and ransacked, looted and demolished hundreds of party and mass organisation offices. A large number of party and mass organisation offices were also captured by them. Offices of CITU-affiliated Tripura Motor Shramik Union (TMSU) in all motor stands in the state were put under lock and key, and BJP flags were raised above pulling down the CITU flag. Thousands of houses of left workers, mainly of CPI(M) activists, were either vandalised, looted or set on fire.

Apart from the individual attacks on the leftists, the BJP goons are carrying on attacks on the livelihood of the left supporters by means of extorting huge amount of money from thousands of CPI(M) and left supporters for so-called celebration of their victory, vandalising or closing down their shops, in many places netting their ponds, taking away their crops from the field, destroying many rubber plantations of the left supporters by setting those on fire. In some places, forcible occupation of lands are also taking place. All these were continuing till March 6, the day when the Class X board examination started in the state.

In a press meet on March 5, CPI(M) state secretary Bijan Dhar called upon the police and civil administrations as well as the BJP leaders to immediately take appropriate steps to arrest the unbridled terror let loose by BJP-IPFT miscreants since March 3. He said that in an election any party or front may be voted out of power. It is quite natural in a democratic system. The Left Front won five consecutive elections since 1993. But such type of terrible attacks never happened following Left Front’s victory earlier. Even the people who did not opt to vote for the Left Front did not expected such type of violence, he said. In reply to a question of journalists, Dhar said that those who are saying that this is the retaliation of what we did earlier, they are practically provoking their miscreants to carry on horrendous attack statewide. This is unexpected from any responsible party.

Narrating the magnitude of the all-round attacks, Dhar informed the newsmen the numbers of various types of attacks till 4.00 p.m. on March 5. That numbers have further gone up till 8 p.m. on March 6.