Agartala: With the announcement of the poll schedule for the assembly elections in Tripura, police have registered as many as six complaints of violence, threat, and intimidation from various political parties while arresting at least 16 people including a corporator of Agartala Municipal Corporation (AMC) in connection with the crimes, police said here on Monday.
The police became active further after ECI suspended a senior Tripura Police Service (TPS) officer, SDPO Jirania Himadri Prasad Das, and removed the officer-in-charge of Jirania and Ranirbazar police stations of West Tripura for their inaction during the four repeated attack on Congress rally despite having a huge number of force 32 people were injured and several motorbikes were vandalized.
“We have reminded the OCs, SDPOs, and SPs to follow the direction of the Zero Poll Violence mission undertaken by ECI and play a neutral role without biasness or partisan attitude. About 200 companies of central force are now deployed across 60 assembly constituencies under the supervision of respective police stations and their service has to be utilized for building confidence among the voters,” said a senior police officer here.
He pointed out that all the district SPs have been directed to start preventive detention and executing the pending warrants against the criminals and trouble mongers without considering their political affiliations and association, and added, “Extensive checking of vehicles and tracking the movement of suspicious people began beside regular flag march and search operation in every locality against the anti-social elements and drug paddlers.”
The police officials maintained despite specific directions from the DGP to act neutrally and to take steps for maintaining a peaceful atmosphere during the election, a few police officers have not been following the principles, rather unnecessary earning a bad name for Tripura police, which wouldn’t be tolerated anymore.
The performance of the policemen up to the police station level has been fetched under scrutiny.
“We are monitoring the activities of the leaders of all the political parties and their movements. The tracking of bank transactions and all other financial activities of all concerns have been brought under the scanner. The measure will be further enhanced with the arrival of another 100 companies of central force and election observers on Jan 29 onwards,” the officer added.
Meanwhile, the South Tripura district administration suspended an auditor identified as Bikash Bhowmik for negligence in duty and asked him not to leave his place.
The CPI-M in a letter to West Tripura DM alleged that ruling BJP -backed goons had been relentlessly trying to break the peace and incite trouble.
“Everywhere goons warned our party workers with dire consequences if they install booth offices. Our party workers were attacked whenever they went to install party flags. Even after they install the flags that were uprooted and thrown away by the BJP goons. The CPI-M leaders and workers cannot go to the people freely for the election campaign,” CPM-M leader Ratan Das wrote to DM Debapriya Bardhan demanding the ensure their unhindrance election activities.
