Letters to the Editor: Stringent law against mob lynching needed

The spate of mob lynching in broad daylight under various pretext over the past few years definitely a matter of concern.. Such an incident took place at the heart of Jorhat town the other day in which Animesh Bhuyan, an AASU leader had to embrace an untimely death. An mob had brutally beaten him to death following just a minor incident. Every citizen of the state is now left with mulling over how to put an end to this kind of self-professed morality of some mindless people. Sadly enough, nobody could be seen to be engaged in the morally courageous act of coming forward to help the victims.

This horrific and shameful incident lays bare the law-and-order situation in the district. It was really unfortunate on the police's part not to be able to rescue the victims from the mob when the police station is just 300 metres away from the spot. It does give us a good lesson that we had better opt for self-defence not merely relying on police protection. It's imperative that every individual should be trained in the techniques of martial arts which are functional in life threatening situations.

It goes without saying that if the escalating cases of mob lynching keep rising, crime cases will continue to trouble our society even in the days to come. Unless the state government adopts a zero tolerance attitude in dealing with such heinous incidents, lynching will continue to show a rising trend in the future. As such, it needs to come up with a more stringent Bill against crime. Then only, the society in general will uphold the rule of law.

Dipen Gogoi,

Teok, Jorhat

Tripura civic poll results

At last, the result of the election took place in Tripura after amid poll-related violence, court cases, Supreme Court's mid election day order to send forces and in the midst of the election arrests and allegations. But as expected, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept the civic body elections (it won 217 of 222 wards) in Tripura, having won all the seats of the 51-member Agartala Municipal Corporation (AMC) and clinching several other urban local bodies. The Opposition Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the CPI(M) failed to open their account in the AMC. Altogether 81.54 per cent of over 4.93 lakh voters exercised their franchise for elections to Tripura's 14 civic bodies. Interestingly, though CPI(M), which won in all the urban bodies in the last civic body polls, has won in three seats across three urban bodies. The TMC which has bagged the second highest number of votes after BJP in the Agartala Municipal Corporation (AMC), has won a single seat while TIPRA Motha has won one seat. Such was the BJP's sweep that the combined Opposition could manage to poll more than the ruling party only in two of the 14 urban bodies — Ambassa and Sonamura.

As per available data, the TMC left the CPI(M) behind to emerge as the main Opposition of the BJP in several wards of Tripura's municipal bodies. Hence, the TMC leaders are elated as the results are an indicator of the party's prospects in the 2023 assembly elections in the north-eastern state. The BJP, however, stated that the civic poll results exposed the "hollowness" of TMC's claims of having made inroads in the northeastern state.

Whether it was earlier in West Bengal and now in Tripura; both the Bengali majority states have shown the dirty part of the election where in the name of election rigging, intimidation, hoodlums and large-scale violence. In the name of democracy, both the states are ready to the incessant attacks on democracy for the sake of power. This is the right time to save the democracy aam admi will now have to share more responsibility to restore democracy. Hence the people should have rejected all fissiparous forces and those inclined to violence and controversy.

Bidyut Kumar Chatterjee

Faridabad-121005