After Left government, Lenin statues fall in Tripura

AGARTALA: Two statues of Lenin have been pulled down in the last 24 hours by mobs in Tripura, where the Left Front suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of BJP and its ally, the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT), in the assembly elections.
On Tuesday, a statue of the Communist icon was razed to the ground at Sabroom, on the southernmost tip of the state bordering Bangladesh, while on Monday a mob demolished a statue of Lenin using an excavator at Belonia. Both Sabroom and Belonia fall in South Tripura district. Coming within two days of BJP demolishing the CPM citadel, the Lenin statues were targeted amid growing attacks on Left Front supporters, allegedly by BJP and IPFT activists. The statue at Belonia was unveiled by former CPM general secretary Prakash Karat only a few months ago.

While the driver of the excavator used to demolish the statue in Belonia has been arrested, police said they were in the process of identifying other attackers. Meanwhile, BJP described the demolition of statues as an “outburst of people’s anger”.

Concerned over the violence, Union home minister Rajnath Singh asked Tripura governor Tathagata Roy and state DGP A K Shukla to ensure peace and tranquillity until the new BJP-IPFT government takes charge. What added more to BJP and Centre’s discomfiture were the tweets from Roy and BJP general secretary Ram Madhav that many construed as being supportive of the demolition of the statues.

The governor had tweeted that “anything done by a democratically elected government can be undone by a new government”. Madhav’s tweet, which was later deleted, referred to the slogan for change which BJP had given during the campaign: “People taking down Lenin’s statue… not in Russia; it is in Tripura. ‘Chalo Paltai’.”

In a memorandum to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday, the CPM politburo asked for his immediate intervention to end the violence in Tripura. The party also announced countrywide coordinated protests against the state government. It said 514 Marxist cadres have been injured and 1,539 houses attacked. It added that 196 houses of party workers have been set ablaze and 134 CPM offices attacked. The memorandum claimed that 208 CPM offices have been captured by attackers.

Police spokesperson Pradip De said there were no reports of disturbance on Tuesday. Talking about the demolition in Belonia, he said, “The statue had been installed with the approval of the local municipality, so pulling it down is a crime. The matter is still under investigation. It could be an act of miscreants.”