Quote:
Hold election under Army supervision: BJP
Statesman News Service
NEW DELHI, May 7: Alleging large scale “cruelty and brutality” by CPI-M cadres in Nandigram against villagers and party nominees, the BJP today demanded that the 11 May Panchayat polls should be held under the armed forces’ supervision.
With the State Election Commission pleading helplessness in acting tough on the perpetrators of violence and the “police acting in tandem with CPM cadres” Nandigram II was being enacted by the CPI-M, the BJP spokesman, Mr Prakash Javadekar, said. He said the CPI-M’s “Stalinist designs” had come to the fore again. He cited an incident of a women being stripped naked and beaten up because she had refused to take part in a CPI-M rally to prove his point. “The BJP would expose the CPI-M’s Stalinist face throughout the country,” he said.
Meanwhile, even as the West Bengal government today ordered an independent inquiry into the BUPC (Bhumi Uchhed Protirodh Committee) woman being stripped naked yesterday by CPM activists, the BJP said nothing short of a CBI inquiry would do. Condemning the incident, Mr Javadeakar said people living in Sonchura, Samasbagh, Gokulnagar and Kalicharanpur, who had refused to toe the CPI-M line, had taken refuge in the tehsil office fearing retribution by the cadres. He said that at about 4000 places the the Opposition candidates were being prevented from filling up their forms.
Referring to the CPI-M cadres’ alleged excesses, the party spokesman said the CRPF was not allowed to move out of their barracks. Mr Javadekar said the party candidates for the coming polls had to bear the brunt of the cadres’ ire. “The Opposition candidates and voters are being mercilessly beaten up by the CPM cadres and also police when they approach them with their complaints,” he said.
Mr Javadekar alleged that CPI-M cadres had snatched voter identity cards of more than 2000 voters. The BJP candidate for Sonchura, Mr Jaydeb Mandal, was hospitalised after he was beaten up by CPI-M cadres, he added. Another party leader Mrs Aarti Mandal’s house was also attacked with bombs, allegedly thrown by CPI-M activists, Mr Javadekar said.
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The Statesman
In my view, this is the typical small-minded thinking that characterises the post-Vajpayee BJP. They want the army to get involved in what are essentially the bedrock of a civilian society, a job that the army could not and more importantly should not participate in.
They are welcome to drag CRPF/ RAF and whatever Central paramilitary force that they need, but they need to keep the military out of this. But that would be probably too complicated to get inside their little populist brains