CPI(M) Fears Misuse of UP-Registered Bikes in Tripura Assembly Polls

Tripura CPI(M) secretary Jitendra Chowdhury has demanded an “impartial inquiry” into the presence of a large number of Uttar Pradesh (UP)-registered motorcycles in the state.

In a letter addressed to the state’s chief secretary JK Sinha and the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Friday, Chowdhury demanded an “impartial inquiry” into such bikes and sought to know who procured and parked them on the premises of the government-managed Bhagat Singh Youth Hostel, which is located close to the Civil Secretariat, in the last one week, news agency UNI reported.

“The government has not yet divulged in whose name the bikes are registered in UP, why the owners allowed those to be transported to Tripura, by whom those bikes were transported here and by under kind of agreement those were procured and shifted here i.e. by sale deed, donation or on rental basis,” the letter read.

Alleging further that prior to the last Assembly polls in 2018, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the name of electioneering, “distributed cash and valuables among their workers, who were also given hundreds of bikes and cars even after the party’s electoral win”, Chowdhury wrote: “Those bikes were ruthlessly misused for repression of the opposition supporters and subverting the democratic rights of the common people.”

The people of Tripura have witnessed “terrible attacks" perpetrated by the bike-borne "gangsters” of the ruling

BJP who carried on “ransacking, looting, destroying and arson” of innumerable number houses belonging to opposition party supporters,” he further wrote. Chowdhury alleged that the BJP’s “bike-ridden stormtroopers” did not spare a single office of any of opposition parties that were “attacked, ransacked and gutted”.

“Some of the offices were attacked several times. All the elections held under the BJP regime have been reduced to complete mockery as votes were looted by using the bike-borne terror-mongers in the state,” Chowdhury wrote.

With the next Assembly scheduled for February 2023, people in the state have “reasons to apprehend” that the bikes would be “misused to loot their voting rights”, particularly Opposition party supporters, the letter read.

CMI(M) is not the only party to question the presence of UP-registered in Tripura. On Tuesday, Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha member Sushmita Dev on wrote to the state’s director general of police Amitabh Ranjan demanding a probe, The Times of India reported.

“I am writing to you to bring to your notice that to the best of my information, several two-wheelers are being bought by the BJP and transported into the state with registration numbers of Uttar Pradesh,” Dev wrote adding that “given the past record of Tripura”, she apprehends that “the motorcycles will be misused during the Assembly polls”.

Dev told the media that Tripura has witnessed relentless violence, attacks and atrocities on opposition supporters and the common people “by motorbike-borne rowdies hired by BJP”. “No only during elections, they were used for vandalising party offices of opposition parties and attacking the houses of the people whoever criticised the misrule of BJP in last four-and-half years. The rallies and meetings of all opposition parties were attacked by motorbike-driven anti-social elements.”