DM Monitoring
New Delhi: Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s continuing silence on Manipur, as the latter paid a visit to Assam on Sunday, January 4. It was Modi’s first visit to Northeast India since ethnic conflict broke out in Manipur on May 3 last year.
Taking to X (formerly Twitter), Khera conveyed to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) that if Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma couldn’t organise a chopper for Modi to travel to Imphal from Guwahati, the Congress party could book a ticket for him on a commercial flight. Along with the comment, Khera appended a screenshot of flight options available from Guwahati to Imphal, which show a flight ticket costs as low as Rs 3,000. Khera’s X post attracted 53k views when this copy was being written.
As expected, Modi, during the one-and-a-half day visit to Assam, remained silent on Manipur – even though the ethnic conflict in that northeastern state has now taken a fierce turn along India’s border areas with a beleaguered Myanmar. Within Manipur, the state is witness to something unseen till now – it is virtually split into two on ethnic lines. Be it the Kuki or Meitei ethnic community, the areas each lay a claim to are being virulently guarded with gun power by non-state actors while security forces, most times, are mere spectators to the goings-on.
Modi’s silence on the ongoing Manipur violence which has thus far rendered thousands homeless and killed many an innocent is particularly being questioned by the Opposition for shielding N. Biren Singh, a chief minister hand-picked by him and his deputy, the home minister Amit Shah. Shah had also gone to the extent of supporting Singh while placing a statement in parliament on the Manipur violence.
For the last nine months, Prime Minister Modi, while stridently backing Biren Singh, has also disregarded the call from common citizens belonging to both the warring communities of Manipur to visit the state at least once. Members of the civil society have underlined to visiting media persons that Manipur is also a BJP-ruled state where Modi’s party had formed a government on its own for the first time after the last assembly polls. Yet, Modi, be it the Prime Minister or the BJP’s poll face, has continued his silence – evoking in some the memory of Modi as the Gujarat chief minister naming the then prime minister Manmohan Singh as “Maun (silent) Mohan Singh” for allegedly maintaining silence on issues that concern the public. Since this past February 3-4, Modi travelled to Assam instead of Manipur, the message he sent out is – once again – loud and clear. The essence of that message is this:
The recent Assam visit of Modi stridently drives home the point that he has been calculatingly avoiding a visit to Manipur.
What comes across from that deliberate avoidance is also that his focus is less on ensuring good governance by a BJP-run state government and more on pocketing a win in an election. This explanation sits perfectly when you bear in mind that he went campaigning in Manipur during the last assembly polls but was nowhere to be seen when many of those who might have voted for his party lost either their lives or property or livelihood or all of it.
