Pinaki Roy is a Mathematics teacher of a high school in Jharia, Jharkhand. Last month he visited Kolkata to generate support for his one noble campaign—Indian national flag be hoisted atop every polling booth of the country.

Roy is about 45 years of age and his father was also a schoolteacher like him.
Roy feels no political party of the country does take interests of the nation upfront. So he urges all political parties and the election commission to allow tricolour be flapping over the polling booths. Roy has also set up an organization for this purpose. His Institution for National Amity comprises of virtually people from all walks of life. Teachers, doctors and social workers all have joined hands to pitch for the issue raised by Roy.

The organization has written to union home ministry and election commission of India appealing them to issue an order in its favour. But Roy is yet to get response in this election. He hopes perhaps in next election his voice would be heard.

Roy said all the political parties engage them in mudslinging during election. Election campaign is also full of false promises and scathing attacks on the opponents.

“Leaders become so ruthless that they even forget they are part of the same country even if from different communities or culture. Educated leaders are no exceptions,” said Roy.
According to him, these all happen as the leaders don’t feel for the country, although the election is for the country’s most suitable thing—democracy.

At this, Roy feels the political parties would do better by showing a lot of respects towards the country on the Election Day. So he is traveling Bihar, Orissa and Bengal to gear up support. Election is to strengthen the democracy and not to create enmity between individuals or between political parties.

Roy’s organization has also suggested that on the election day presiding officer be given the charge to hoist the flag in the morning in the presence of security personnel and political volunteers. According to rules, the flag will be downed before the sunset. To activate patriotism among the political functionaries, national anthem may please be played.

“This will generate patriotism among the political functionaries who vented ire against each other during campaign. By doing this they could also seek forgiveness from the country for their misdeed,” the organization believes.

The Election commission’s latest order asking every state government to remove the pictures and statuettes other than Mahatma Gandhi, current president of India and respective governors of the state earned a strong protest in West Bengal with chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee refused to implement it.

Minutes after the order reached Writers’ building, the administrative headquarter of Bengal, last night, a furious communist chief minister declared: “Come what may, I will not remove the photos of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, Rabindranath Tagore and other late luminaries of Bengal. Such an order not only uncalled for but also mindless mockery on our history of freedom struggle.”

“If they understand it will be fine, otherwise left front will sit together and would go for a movement,” he added further.

Kolkata, since 2006, has been seeing the hyper activity of the election commission during poll time, especially during last assembly election. The city commended every approach of the election commission, like banning wall graffiti done without permission of the house-owner. But such an order the Kolkatans found very hard to digest.

Varun Gandhi must be booked for what he has done. But poor luminaries of Bengal. What the hell have they done? Cannot we show some leniency to them even if at some point of time some or other belonged to a certain political parties?