To mount pressure on the West Bengal government, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the state, along with all its associates, have been organising district-wise protest marches and gherao programmes regularly at government offices to demand a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the killings of Trilochan Mahato and Dulal Kumar of Purulia and all other alleged political killings during the panchayat elections held last month.
The BJP had organised over 50 candlelight marches in all the districts of West Bengal along with protests and demonstrations outside the offices of District Magistrates (DM) and Superintendents of Police across all districts.
BJP’s North 24 Parganas district unit has, for instance, already organised over 10 candlelight marches across its various blocs and mandals, and protest marches to the DM’s office in Barasat and several marches to and gheraos at police stations in the district where reports of violence were rampant during the panchayat elections.
Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha’s (BJYM) Bongaon North Vidhan Sabha organised a special candlelight march of 10 km earlier this week in remembrance of BJP workers Trilochan Mahato and Dulal Kumar, and demanded a CBI inquiry into the matter.
BJYM Bongaon North, Pauro Mandal president Rajib Roy told The Sunday Guardian, “We demand an immediate CBI probe into the political killings that happened during the panchayat polls. Our young brothers have been killed in Purulia for just not conforming to the ideology of the present ruling dispensation of Bengal. Democracy has been killed in Bengal; today every member of the BJP lives in constant fear of either death or police atrocity. We want immediate restoration of democracy and freedom in Bengal.”
The BJP’s Purulia district unit where the two BJP workers—Trilochan Mahato and Dulal Kumar—were found hanging, have also been regularly conducting protest marches and candlelight marches across several important towns in the district and the district headquarters, demanding arrests and a probe by the CBI.
Bidyasagar Chakraborty, BJP’s Purulia district president, told The Sunday Guardian, “It is unfortunate that we had to lose young and able leaders of our organisation. They (TMC) could not accept the fact that they performed poorly in this area and that their popularity was going down. They killed Trilochan because he was active and was managing booths during the panchayat elections, while Dulal was also a strong organisational man. We will continue with our protests daily outside our office here in Purulia, as well as district offices till our demand for a fair probe into these political killings is met. We have no faith in the state police and CID.”
Even districts like Birbhum and Nadia, where the BJP is growing by the day, have been protesting and organising marches not only against the alleged political killings, but also against the alleged threats and intimidation that winning candidates of the BJP have been facing at the hands the ruling Trinamool Congress.
Jagannath Sarkar, BJP president, Nadia South, said, “Even the associate wings like Yuva Morcha, Mahila Morcha and the OBC Morcha are conducting their special programmes to mount pressure on the government to hear us. The state government does not even hear us out and all our pleas seem to have been going in vain. We had given several deputations to the DM as well as to the SP, but nothing seems to have moved.”
The panchayat polls earlier last month saw rampant violence and fatalities like never before. A total of 77 deaths were reported during the entire process of the elections, out of which the BJP claims to have lost 25 of its party workers.