BJP team to visit Tripura

Agartala, July 26 (IANS) A Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) team will visit Tripura next week to look into the alleged political violence in the Left-ruled state, party sources said Saturday.

The BJP's central delegation led by the party's vice-president and party in-charge of the northeast region S.S. Ahluwalia, during its two-day stay in Tripura, would visit some rural areas where clashes took place after the recent panchayat polls and also meet acting governor Padmanabha Balakrishna Acharya.

"The ruling CPI-M (Communist Party of India-Marxist) workers and members unleashed terror and attacked the opposition party supporters in different parts of the state after the panchayat election. Many men and women were injured in the attacks," BJP's Tripura president Sudhindra Dasgupta told reporters.

He said the BJP's central team would visit villages in different districts July 28 and 29 and talk to the people affected by the violence.

The BJP, for the first time, secured a majority in five gram panchayats and won 141 seats in several other gram panchayats in the July 15 local bodies' election.

Dasgupta and other BJP leaders were allegedly attacked by CPI-M workers earlier this week at Jatrapur village in western Tripura when they went there to meet BJP supporters who were assaulted by Left party members.

The BJP workers led by senior party leaders then held demonstrations in front of the state police headquarters in Agartala and other districts.

The CPI-M said the allegations against its party workers were false.

"Dasgupta's vehicle hit four CPI-M workers at Jatrapur. Following this, several other CPI-M workers rushed to the spot and protested against the incident," a CPI-M leader later told reporters.

Police sub-inspector Swapan Kar, who led a police team to provide security to the BJP leaders, was suspended for negligence of duty.