All India Conference of Revolutionary Youth Association
The 7th All-India Conference of Revolutionary Youth Association began on 10-11 September at Medininagar of Jharkhand named Nilambar-Pitambar Nagar by the organisers. The conference venue was renamed Nilambar-Pitambar Nagar to honour martyrs of 1857 revolt. The open session of the Conference was inaugurated by comrade Dipankar Bhattacharya and was also addressed by CPIML Politburo member Vinod Singh, former JNUSU President Sucheta De, AISA General Secretary Prasenjit Kumar, CPIML MLA in Bihar Ajit Singh Kushwaha and RYA’s Jharkhand leader Jayvir Hansda.
Before the formal inauguration of the conference guests and delegates went to Lesliganj to pay tribute to Nilambar, Pitambar and their fellow fighters who had kept alive the flame of 1857 in the forests and fields of Palamu for nearly two years. They went to the village where Nilambar and Pitambar were hanged to death from a peepal tree and also to the nearby field in Qurain Patra panchayat where the corpses of our great martyrs were thrown into a well.
The conference began by garlanding the statues of Jharkhand's great martyrs Nilambar and Pitambar who had carried on the 1857 revolt for more than a year and were hanged by the colonial rulers at Lesliganj on 28 March, 1859.
Comrade Dipankar said in his address saying that while focusing on today's battle of Young India for a secular socialist democratic India, let us draw inspiration from the manifesto of HSRA. There is no memorial to these heroes of 1857 in either of these places, but there is an ongoing battle for preserving their memories by local citizens with full support of the Palamu and Jharkhand units of CPIML.
The RYA conference adopted this demand as a key issue in our ongoing commemoration of the 75th anniversary of India's independence.
On way back from Nilambar-Pitambar pur (Lesliganj) to the venue of the conference, leaders garlanded the statues of Subhas Bose, Dr. Ambedkar and Bhagat Singh on the way. The conference venue was the Town Hall which was earlier named after Mahatma Gandhi. A bust of Gandhi is still there, but the Raghubar Das regime had installed a more prominent bust of Deen Dayal Upadhyay just outside the reconstructed Town Hall. The delegates and guests garlanded the statue of Gandhi and paid homage to all our martyrs for freedom and democracy before entering the Conference Hall, named after Rohith Vemula and the ever-smiling ever-inspiring comrade of revolutionary student-youth movement, martyr comrade Chandrashekhar.
The conference continued for two days attended by more than 400 Delegates from 18 states across India determined to defeat the fascist conspiracy against India and India's youth and win the rights to universal education and employment, food and health, and protect the Republic from fascist takeover and the environment and climate from corporate plunder and destruction.
The conference elected Manoj Manzil as President and Neeraj as General Secretary along with a 103 member national council, 51 member Executive, 6 national Vice Presidents and 6 national Secretaries.
