BJP leaders and their karyakatas keep talking about the neglect of ‘core issues’ by the new Inner Manipur MP, Bimol Akoijam, in his Lok Sabha speech. Their proposition is that, one needs to deal with the said core issues. The core issues as they put it, are unrestricted access of illegal immigrants from across the border, foreign mercenaries equipped with sophisticated weapons crossing over to create chaos and mayhem in the state, drug cartels based in Myanmar financing poppy farming in the hills of Manipur and arming Kuki-Zo militant groups besides instigating racial hatred, the unresolved status of tripartite SoO agreement with the Kuki militants as compounded by ‘patronage’ from a few forces, and unrestricted encroachment of forests lands and new settlements by Kuki-Zos.
The issue of separate administration or Union territory (ST) came up later on. Well, how do we tackle these issues? They sing paeans about the scrapping of Free Movement Regime and border fencing in recent times by Union Home Minister Amit Shah. But question is, will it be able to stop the entry of illegal immigrants which have overwhelmed our villages in the border regions? While the official Indian government policy is against providing shelter to refugees, the border guarding force is either unable or unwilling to stop the flow of war-ravaged illegal immigrants from across the border.
Maybe, it is a humanitarian gesture but every other day the number of illegal immigrants keep increasing. Point is, policy and execution do not match on the ground. The state government is undertaking biometric registration of the illegal immigrants, but the process of deportation is negligible as compared to the number of entries. On the other hand, the hand of suspected foreign mercenaries in attacks upon the valley villages seems to have reached distant Jiribam. Illegal roads or highways including bridges connecting Churachandpur and Kangpokpi besides other areas are constructed without any restriction from the security forces.
The BJP government here is still unable to convince its central leadership on the need for permanent abrogation of SoO or affirmative action against violations of ground rules and the integrity of the state. Yet, they continue to harp on the exploits of PM Modi and HM Amit Shah, while everyone here knows that the two central leaders do not care a whit about Manipur. As the newly appointed Manipur incharge Ajeet Gopchade explained, Prime Minister Narendra Modi would visit Manipur once he is able to conjure a solution to the Manipur crisis. BJP leaders including the Chief Minister say, Amit Shah had gifted Inner Line system (ILP) to Manipur without much effort.
A student Robinhood made the supreme sacrifice while scores of students put their career on the line for ILP. Amit Shah extended ILP to Manipur simply because he wants to avoid a headache or stumbling block in his pursuit of Citizen Amendment Act (CAA) and not because he cared for the indigenous Meiteis. And, a watered-down version of ILP is being implemented here. As regards NRC, we need to locate the National Register of Citizens and Village Directory of 1951 pertaining to Manipur for conducting a correct assessment of the citizens of the Manipur then and their descendants as against the illegal immigrants who came later on.
While the new entries could be checked and identified along with a biometric guarantee for deportation in the near future, the important job is about identifying those immigrants who had infiltrated in the past and somehow integrated in the system. Let us say, state machineries are able to detect the illegal immigrants and their descendants. Then what?
