To combat one of the SFI movements, a regular occurrence in the seventies, the police had to arrest Tapan Chakraborty, a fellow SFI activist (later a minister in the third left front ministry in Tripura). Bimal Singha brought the town’s administration to a standstill that day. While staging a demonstration before the SDO office, police resorted to a mild lathi charge on the students. Some of the students had begun to show signs of backing away when Bimal Singha snatched a stick from a policeman and gave the fight a new turn. The law enforcers gave away. The sub-divisional administration bowed to the students demand and released Chakraborty.
The local administration, quite expectedly, had to several times issue warrants for the arrest of this untamable student leader who had held the sub-divisional administration to ransom. During these periods, Bimal Singha went underground and lived among the tribesmen in hill areas. During late sixties and early seventies, tribes people of Tripura were passing through one of the gloomiest phases of their history. Penury in its starkest nakedness, misery and suffering in their extreme helplessness, exploitation and defraudation in their cruelest manifestation greeted Bimal Singha in the hills. The great lover of humanity could not hold back his tears, the rebel in him roared in anger. History felt the tremors of an ensuing eruption. It is true that the seed of revolution was sown in the hills much earlier. Dasharath Debbarma, Biren Dutta, Nripen Chakraborty, Baidyanath Majumdar and other senior leaders of the communist party had already tilled the land in the hills feeding the hungry eyes with the dream of a socialist society free from hunger, exploitation and inequality. But Bimal Singha’s exposure to life in the hills put the much needed match to the parched woods. The flare-up ignited thus spread like wildfire and culminated in the installation of a communist government in the state. The motto of his life too seemed to undergo a great change. The insufferable misery of the Reangs, Tripuris and various other hill tribes came to be an obsession with him.
The communist party of India (Marxist) came to power in Tripura in 1977. Bimal Singha was elected member to the state’s Legislative Assembly. After five years, the left front government was elected to power for a second term. People expected the popular leader- the greatest crowd-puller from the younger-generation leaders- to be given ministerial berth. But Bimal Singha had to be contented with the post of the deputy speaker of the legislative assembly. However, he devoted himself to the service of the poor and the downtrodden, particularly the tribesmen.
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