Blockade after clash on campus -PSU claims four of its members injured
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TT, Siliguri, Jan. 15: The SFI and the Progressive Students’ Union clashed at the Siliguri Women’s College today with the RSP’s student wing claiming that four of its members were seriously injured and setting up a two-hour blockade at Hashmi Chowk in protest.
The PSU also alleged that seven to eight of its candidates had been beaten up by rival SFI members. Of the four “seriously” injured, one has been hospitalised.
Trouble started when the results were declared around 4pm and it became evident that the SFI, the CPM”s student wing, has swept the polls by winning all the 18 seats. Aparna Shah, a PSU candidate, said her group was attacked by four SFI supporters while they were coming down the stairs after the counting was over.
“They pulled our hair and slapped us around all the while using abusive language till our other supporters rescued us and took us to hospital in an ambulance. I was kicked in my lower abdomen and my gold chain and cellphone were snatched from me,” Aparna said. She, along with Sharmila Barui and Suparna Dasgupta, were released after first aid from Siliguri district hospital while Tina Mondal was admitted after she complained she had been hit on the head and suffered an injury in her eyes.
“Police were mute spectators. They watched us getting hammered and did nothing to come to our aid,” Tina said.
After the alleged assault, the PSU members blocked Hashmi Chowk from 4.30pm, affecting traffic on the busy Hill Cart Road and Bidhan Road. Around 5pm, a large force, led by the inspector-in-charge of Siliguri police station, Alok Dasgupta, removed the barricades by lathicharging the students.
However, the students did not disperse and began to stop passing vehicles forcibly. The PSU girls once again sat down on the road. They prevented women constables from physically lifting and taking away Bani Chakrabarty, the district president of the PSU. The deputy superintendent of police, Sitaram Sinha, arrived around 5.30pm and was immediately gheraoed.
The protesters demanded the transfer of the inspector-in-charge and the arrest of the guilty SFI girls. However, the DSP told them that they should lift the blockade and file a formal complaint.
“We are filing a complaint with the additional superintendent of police and not with the inspector-in-charge,” said Satarupa Ghosh, the district secretary of the PSU. The blockade was lifted at 6.30pm.
In the morning, too, there had been a scuffle when about 50 SFI supporters were prevented from entering the premises allegedly by the PSU. “They came to vote around 11.45am and were not allowed inside. A scuffle broke out and they could not cast their votes,” said the outgoing SFI general secretary of the college union, Sayantani Dey.
Satarupa, however, countered the SFI charge saying the girls were all “outsiders”. The voting took place from 11am to noon. The SFI denied that its members had assaulted the PSU candidates. “They attacked us instead with chains and sharp weapons as soon as they realised that they were not winning a single seat. We have filed an FIR against them,” said Sayantani.
The police have denied the allegations of lathicharge. “There was no lathicharge. Nobody has lodged any FIRs. But a complaint has been submitted to the additional superintendent of police,” said DSP Sinha.
At Siliguri Commerce College, the elections went of peacefully with the Chhatra Parishad retaining the union by winning 48 seats of the 67. The Trinamul Chhatra Parishad won 16 and the SFI three.
Stay on student poll
In Alipurduar, the civil judge has stayed the student union election of Jaigaon College scheduled for tomorrow.
The order came after the Chhatra Parishad filed a case alleging that the name of Plara Lakra, a BA 2nd year student who had filed nomination as a candidate for Girl’s Common Room Representative, figured in the category of Class Representatives on the final list.
Principal Bhashkar Jha admitted to have received the court order at 3.30pm. “Based on the candidate’s application, our election committee had made the correction. But the court stayed the poll and has asked us to submit a report within three days.”
Tribal Travails Birkha Khadka Duvarseli
Whether the adivasi movement will achieve its objective is anybody’s guess, but for the moment it has definitely given a handle to those opposing Gorkhaland.
THE recently held by-election at Kalchini exposed the rift in the Akhil Bharatiya Adivasi Vikas Parishad. Since prior to it the organisation’s state leadership had categorically declared that it wouldn’t enter the fray in the assembly election. But the state leadership’s statement with regard to contesting the seat was directly countered by the Dooars leadership, which said that steps had been taken before nominations were filed.
The rift between local and state leaders hardly narrowed. The former had catapulted an independent candidate, Sandip Ekka having resigned from the post, whereas the latter gave tacit support to the RSP candidate expecting the government to back him.
However, the ABAVP faced its worst ever electoral jolt. As a result of which it decided to reconstitute its Doors-Terai Coordination Committee for revitalising the moral strength of the organisation and its members at a meeting held in Nagrakata on 6 December. In the 7 November assembly by-poll at Kalchini the organisation backed independent candidates who lost to the Gorkha Jan Mukti Morcha-backed candidates despite adivasis being the dominant voters across the Dooars belt. The defeat irked the tribal outfit to introspect and revamp the Parishad and its committee as well as assess the activity of its members.
There was unparalleled confusion among members over and above the electoral debacle.
Till date, the Parishad has achieved precious little. Since the day of its inception as a rival political outfit in the Dooars the organisation has had no other mandate than opposing the GJMM’s policies. Rather astonishingly, the GJMM, in its turn, has branded the Parishad as a non-political organisation that, surprisingly, exists without any political party’s active patronage. The state leadership, however, has always lent support to the tribal cause even at times when the political situation was far from favourable in North Bengal.
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According to R Lakra, general secretary of the Parishad’s existing Dooars-Terai committee, after the reconstitution of the body it will likely come to a decision as regards future agitation programmes coinciding with the tripartite talks to be held in Darjeeling over the Gorkhaland demand.
The ABAVP, according to Lakra, is not opposed to Gorkhaland per se, but the inclusion of Dooars-Terai in it. That is precisely why, just a day before the Kalchini by-poll, the Parishad raised the demand for the Dooars-Terai Adivasi Development Council in the pattern of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council, which was instantly rejected by Gorkhaland enthusiasts.
This, furthermore, led to untoward incidents in the Dooars with clashes between GJMM and the Parishad’s supporters over the trivial issue of appointing agents. The Parishad called a Dooars-Terai bandh demanding the release of nine of its supporters including the president of the Jaigaon-Hasimara zonal committee, Raju Bara. It also raised the demand for arrest of a clutch of policemen allegedly engaged in torturing ABAVP supporters.
But the district administration turned a deaf ear: neither were the policemen brought to book nor were the arrested released. A Kumar, superintendent of Jalpaiguri, declared that releasing the arrested was a judicial prerogative and cautioned the Parishad of involvement in such activities in the future. The bandh, he said, was causing law and order problems and warned that stern steps would be taken against the Parishad if it continued its agitation.
Under the leadership of the Parishad’s state president, Birsha Tirkey, a five-member delegation met the chief secretary, Ashok Mohan Chakrabarty in Kolkata. Chakrabarty asked the delegation to convene a meeting to raise their demands in a democratic manner. According to Tirkey, the proposed council will provide a forum for the economic, social and cultural development of the adivasis of the Dooars and Terai. The council must be financed and monitored by the Centre.
Addressing a press conference in Siliguri, Tirkey denied any association with the Maoists and clarified that the ABAVP was a peaceful democratic association of, for and by the tribals. The tribal movement in North Bengal, he added, was a democratic and egalitarian one and if civilised agitation is equated with sympathy for Maoism then Bengal’s adivasis would have no political voice left.
Whether the tribal movement will attain a modicum of success only time can tell, but for the moment it has definitely given a handle to those opposing Gorkhaland
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