Agartala, Dec. 6: Largescale student unrest stares Tripura in the face with rivals National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) and Student Federation of India (SFI) limbering up for a showdown in the context of upcoming elections to student councils in 11 colleges across the state.
During the past five days, student activists of the ruling CPM and the Opposition Congress, represented under the banners of the SFI and the NSUI respectively, have fought pitched battles in MBB College, Bir Bikram Memorial College and Ramthakur College of Agartala over enrolment of members and preparation of voter lists.
Altogether 35 students, belonging to the both camps, have sustained minor injuries in heavy clashes and security has been tightened in all the colleges.
Both the SFI and the NSUI leaders made allegations and counter-allegations regarding the reasons for the violence.
Senior Congress leader and former minister Ratan Chakraborty, who keeps in touch with the party’s student wing NSUI, said since 1993, when the Left Front had returned to power, the SFI has had a free run because of inaction on the part of the NSUI.
“The SFI has consistently formed student councils without election debarring the NSUI from enrolling members under duress. But the situation changed in July this year when NSUI activists took a bold initiative to enrol members at the time of admission to colleges, resulting in protracted violence in which police played a partisan role. Many NSUI activists sustained injuries in attacks by SFI storm-troopers and in police action,” said Ratan Chakraborty.
Attributing the latest round of violence to opposition to holding elections to constitute student councils, Chakraborty said the SFI was opposing the NSUI’s legitimate demand for elections “because they know that in free and fair elections they will lose control over nine out of 11 colleges in the state”.
He added that unless the state-backed party restrained itself there would be major student unrest in the state as the NSUI would not “tolerate the unsolicited tutelage of the SFI in all matters”.
However, sources in the CPM held the NSUI’s unprovoked aggressiveness in voter enrolment responsible for the latest round of trouble in colleges.
Sources said the NSUI was out to forcibly seize control of all the student councils in an “undemocratic manner” but the SFI was resisting this.
“The NSUI wants to take over the colleges but we can not allow this to happen; we will fight and resist such nefarious attempts,” said SFI state secretary Guam Mazumder.
The principal of MBB College, Monideepa Debbarma, said she was not aware of the latest turn of events but would inquire into the matter.
“No concrete decision has been taken in the meeting but the representatives of student organisations have been requested by the director of higher education, Kishore Ambuly, to exercise restraint and help maintain peace on the college campuses,” Debbarma said.
