Bengal Trotskyist group and a veteran trade-union worker, has won in the recently held municipal election in Khardah, an industrial suburb of Calcutta. Jadav secured 634 votes and defeated his nearest rival by . a margin of 370 votes, there being four candidates in all. Out of 2,400 voters in‘his constituency 1,500 voters exercised their franchose rights. Municipal elections are now being held throughout West
Bengal,. for the first time, .on the basis of adult franchise.
Samiran: Jdadav, aged 30 years, is. the first factory worker to become a municipal commissioner in his locality. He joined the Trote skyist movement about fourteen years ago and distinguished himself, from the very beginning, as a militant trade unionist. He created history'in the Khardah working-class area, where he is employed as a worker in'a jute mill, by defeating his employers in a long drawn. out. legal battle which carried him finally up to India's Supreme Court and got back his job last year against his arbitrary dismissal,
-. The news of Jadav'ts victory was carried in all leading national dailies, ‘To the workers in-Khardah and the neighbouring industrial area, his fight became a symbol of proletarian determination. His municipal victory is a token of the love and esteem in which he is held by his worker friends...
It may be recalled here that Samiran Jadav resigned, in April 1964, together with nearly’ one hundred of his Trotskyist comrades, from membership in the Revolutionary Communist party of India, in protest against the nationalist degeneration and the new, classcollaborationist line pursued by its teaderahip on the > ples of "national defence" against China.
The Khardah election was fought in close collaboration with the local left Communists who, though very weak in the industrial . front, helped considerably by supplying middle-class cadres,
‘Samiran Jadav's victory has created great enthusiasm among the working class’ in Khardah. About eight thousand workers gathered on the day of polling to greet him when the news was announced,..
NORTH OR SOUTH -- POLICE ARE THE SAME
By Evelyn Sell
"Mississippi is not just a geographical location but also. a state of mind, one which is much too prevalent in our police depart-~ ment." These words, from the president of the Detroit branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP], sum up years of Negro experience with police brutality in northern cities of the USA. Civil-rights stories in the American press tend to give the impression that all or most