Last week’s death of an ailing four-year-old child on the road in Shimla as a clash between BJP and Congress workers held up traffic has left the state shocked. While political violence isn’t new to Himachal Pradesh, it is generally reserved for the elections.Clashes of the kind seen near the Vidhan Sabha last Wednesday are virtually unheard of. Several top politicians, including the BJP’s former chief minister Shanta Kumar, were injured. Observers are seeing the incident as an evidence of the rising intolerance among politicians in the state. The kind of language cropping up during House debates recently is another proof of the falling standards of politics. But till now Shimla’s streets had never witnessed any organised political confrontation inviting police intervention. Former Speaker and veteran lawyer Kultar Chand Rana is surprised that two rallies, especially one called by the ruling Congress, were held simultaneously and near the Vidhan Sabha’s gate last week — leading to tension and eventually clashes.“It’s growing intolerance and violence which worry old-timers like me. These things were unknown at the time I presided over the House during Dr Y S Parmar’s time,” Rana said.Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh and half-a-dozen ministers and MLAs who were present at the site when the violence started apparently did nothing to control their workers. Instead, using the balcony of a flat allotted to a Congress MLA as a dais, the Chief Minister displayed a “sword” presented to him by supporters and exhorted his men to take on the BJP. The violence that broke out lasted for nearly an hour, blocking roads and halting traffic. One of those caught in the jam was four-year-old Dinesh and his parents, who were taking the boy suffering from diarrhoea to a hospital. Stones and empty bottles were used for attack. And it wasn’t as if the Government didn’t know the possibility of violence if simultaneous rallies were held. The district administration had warned against it, as did PCC president Viplove Thakur.However, Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Kaul Singh Thakur refutes suggestions that the Congress shouldn’t have called for a rally the same day as the BJP’s.“You can’t question the Congress’s right to organise the rally, or the counter rally. Does that give a licence to the BJP to attack Congress members attending the rally?” he asserts. With relations between the two parties at a new low, it is expected that the elections which are barely five months away would be bitter.
