Kolkata, Apr 4 (PTI) Senior CPI(M) leader Md Salim defended the gherao of judicial officers in Malda, saying that “when injustice becomes law, resistance is the only way out”.
Speaking to PTI on the violent events and high drama that took place on Wednesday and continued till the early hours of Thursday, Salim, the West Bengal state secretary and the party’s politburo member, called the incident an “inevitable fallout of the abject failure of both the Centre and state to reflect people’s aspirations and publish an error-free electoral roll”.
“Such agitations are bound to happen when the citizenship and voting rights of people are taken away. The Election Commission is violating the People’s Representative Act. When criminal-minded people become legislators, they fail to address emerging issues by enacting laws and enhancing the power of executives and bureaucrats. It has hence come down to people versus the executives,” Salim said.
“When executives, starting from the BDOs to the CEO and all the way up to the EC, fail to deliver justice, the character of administration becomes a police state. They then sway from the democratic path and take hard coercive steps,” he added.
Seven judicial officers were held hostage inside the local BDO office in the Mothabari area of Malda district and an eighth was confined inside a vehicle for about nine hours on Wednesday after a large crowd, protesting post-SIR deletion of names from voters’ lists, turned violent by blocking roads, vandalising vehicles and attacking police personnel.
So far, at least 35 people have been arrested by the state CID in connection with the violence, with the NIA now tasked by the EC with probing the incident following a directive from the Supreme Court, which has censured the West Bengal administration over the issue.
Those arrested include the suspected prime instigator, Mofakkarul Islam, a 43-year-old Calcutta High Court lawyer who contested the 2021 state polls on an AIMIM ticket, his associate and fellow lawyer Ekramul Bagani and Mothabari ISF candidate Maulana Shahjahan Ali.
The CPI(M) has stitched an alliance with the ISF for the upcoming assembly polls and is fighting the AIMIM to counter its “communal agenda”.
“When injustice becomes law, resistance is the only way out. Across the world, people have resisted this kind of undemocratic, unconstitutional, irrational acts of the executives. By overriding people’s power, no executive can survive,” Salim said.
The Left leader alleged that the controversial SIR exercise in the state was akin to “a war” against the marginalised, poor and backward sections of the population.
“Right from the beginning, the SIR game plan was to re-establish the binary of divisive politics. The names which were isolated for adjudication were region and religion specific, keeping in mind demography and election results,” he alleged.
“This is a war against the Matuas, refugees, Muslims, women, minorities and the transgender community. Names of many who qualified for mapping and established progeny were deleted without assigned reasons for removal. It was an ill-prepared exercise conducted with a biased AI tool,” he added.
Salim said the judiciary’s involvement in the exercise was a result of both the legislative and executive arms of the administration failing to deliver.
“They neither know West Bengal nor the Bengalis, with little idea of how Bengali names are pronounced, spelt and written. Since the days of the British, rulers from Delhi have failed to understand this. Sending names for adjudication means both legislative and executive have failed, and now it is incumbent on the judiciary. When that happens, the bureaucracy, police or civil servants become powerful, and people’s resistance is inevitable,” he added. PTI SMY ACD
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