After the sudden change in the balance of political power following the successive electoral setbacks, the ruling Communist Party of India - Marxist has made it and its government helpless in the face of growing violence and series of murderous attacks on its cadres and sympathisers.
Two days back, Ananda Das, a former CPI-M Member of Legislative Assembly from Nanur, Birbhum was brutally shot dead by a gang of armed people who had attacked and ransacked a number of CPI-M offices in that area. The CPI-M state secretary Biman Bose on Thursday expressed concern and helplessness at the growing violence which has been continuing in the state.
According to Bose, at least 241 CPI-M activists and sympathisers have lost their lives in the past one year after the Lok Sabha elections. Of them, 139 people were killed in Junglemahal alone.
Besides the Junglemahal (West Midnapur, Bankura and Purulia districts), where the Naxalites (CPI-Maoist) have been waging an armed conflict against the state government and the ruling party sympathisers, political violence is taking place in districts like Burdwan, Birbhum, North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas, Nadia and Murshidabad, where the CPI-M workers are increasingly being targeted by the opposing political forces, mostly the TMC.
It is true that in the ensuing political violence, the TMC and other political parties are losing their people, but the ruling CPI-M is bearing the burnt of it most. According to the state home department's estimate, at least 400 people died in political violence in the last one year.
There has been a growing feeling within the Left Front that the state administration, keeping with the wind of change, is switching allegiance to the opposition and not coming out to protect the Left workers when they are facing trouble. Biman Bose himself lamented that the Nanur episode could have been averted had the police taken initiative on time. But in the absence of a proactive administration, the CPI-M is bleeding. In the last 10 days, the CPI-M has lost 15 cadres in political clashes.
Voicing concern over the growing trend of violence, the CPM leader has termed it as a deliberate ploy to attack and weaken the democratic atmosphere in the state which will eventually erode the democratic culture and threaten the civic life. While he urged the state administration to firmly put an end to lawlessness, he asked people to protest against the culture of bloodletting.
Unfortunately for CPI-M, a discordant note has been sounded by a Left Front MLA on Thursday at the state assembly. Tapan Hore, a Revolutionary Socialist Party MLA from Bolpur (Nanur comes under Bolpur block) has claimed that the recent killing in Nanur has its roots in the acrimonious relation between the RSP and CPI-M there and criminalisation of politics has only aggravated that. He contented that last week one Phulu Sheikh was fired upon allegedly by CPI-M goons.
