Devi Prasad P Tripathi, affectionately called DPT, passed away on Thursday after battling with cancer at the relatively young age of 67
A former President of JNU Students’ Union, a former member of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) , a socialist, former Rajya Sabha member and general secretary of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), DP Tripathi passed away in Delhi on Thursday.
An erudite, well-read man, he was known to quote effortlessly from the works of poets, writers and philosophers. A man with remarkable memory, he would remember lines from speeches made in Parliament and outside.
People from the media and political parties would call on him to understand political currents and undercurrents. He had a special relationship with political leaders from Nepal and worked for Indo-Nepal friendship till the very end.
Above all, he was an outspoken person, who never failed to surprise with his ideas. Delivering his last farewell speech in the Rajya Sabha in 2018, DPT wondered why the Indian Parliament never debated on the judiciary, media, women and sex.
Citing a report he said that a million young Indians would die in the next 10 years of sexual diseases but the Indian Parliament refused to discuss sex. He recalled that Mahatma Gandhi and even socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia had written candidly on sex.
He believed that a civilised nation is known by its criminal justice system. And he worried that the system in India was broken. Criminals were not afraid of the law, he said in the House in 2014, and while Parliament incessantly discussed the decline of democracy, it had no time to discuss the decline of the judiciary.
In the debate on the Motion of Thanks to the President’s address to Parliament in June, 2014, DPT did not mince his words. While the Prime Minister and other speakers were all referring to a superlative India ( Ek Bharat-Shresth Bharat) , nobody spoke of a ‘ Sabhya Bharat’ ( civilised India). India, he said, could not call itself civilised unless it stopped unimaginable atrocities on children. No country could call itself civilised by torturing and criminalising children, he quipped.
source: NH
