It is rather strange that the Manipur BJP leadership should get angry or irritated whenever the Opposition raises the issue of Manipur crisis in either the parliament or elsewhere. They simply cannot comprehend the obvious fact which everyone in Manipur knows or understands. The central BJP leadership beginning right from Prime Minister Narendra does not care a whit or have time about the turmoil in Manipur as their mind is elsewhere, while the state leadership does not even have the guts to present their point of view.
For more than one and four months, the chief minister and Manipur MLAs have not been given appointment to meet the Prime Minister. They go to New Delhi only to come back dejected. On two occasions, it was the Meira Paibis and a few youth groups who practically forced them to go and present their views to the PM and the central leadership. Not to talk of the MLAs, even the chief minister and state organisational leadership was denied an audience. This was one of the main reasons of MLAs not being able to actively campaign for the party candidate in the recent Lok Sabha elections or somehow clinch the ballot as the general public were not amused by their inaction and subservient nature towards the leadership.
So, the state BJP leadership had no reason to feel dejected when their candidate was defeated. In fact, it was a powerful message to the central leadership that this is what happens when the central leadership does not listen to the state leaders and they could have turned it to their advantage instead of sulking in a corner.
When the newly elected Inner Manipur MP Angomcha Bimol Akoijam succeeded in extracting a reply on Manipur from the Prime Minister Narendra Modi with his powerful midnight speech, the state BJP leadership instead of being elated went into a lame offensive of MP Bimol not touching the ‘core issues’ of the Manipur crisis. The immediate ‘core issue’ before the new MP was to break Narendra Modi’s self-induced ‘mounabarta’ and direct his attention to Manipur. The genesis or other issues which are fuelling the Manipur crisis will come later on in other debates.
Even after Professor Bimol’s midnight speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi chose to ignore Manipur in his Lok Sabha reply to the debate on Motion of Thanks to the President’s address, amid cries of ‘Justice for Manipur’ by the Opposition members. But then, he chose to speak on Manipur in the Rajya Sabha. Professor Bimol struck the right chord by invoking a comparison of Modi’s uncaring silence with the attitude of British colonialists then. A parallel drawn with the colonial attitude of the Indian establishment so far espoused by insurgent groups must have awakened Narendra Modi. What the state BJP leadership could not deliver for more than one year, Professor Bimol achieved with just one speech and they should have been grateful for that.
Yet, they continued to criticise Professor Bimol as they have nothing worthwhile to say. Again, they become agitated whenever the local Opposition here criticises the central BJP leadership for ignoring Manipur while they should have been grateful that at least someone is doing what they should be doing. They keep on saying that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah are keenly watching the Manipur situation, which is not at all matched by action from the central leadership.
They also became extremely angry when Professor Bimol and others raised the issue of the Union Finance Minister neglecting or not mentioning Manipur in her budget speech and tried to defend her by saying that she cannot mention each and every state. Manipur is one of the hot issues confronting India in recent times and there should have been something to address the issues involved in it. But she avoided it, not to mention any kind of assistance for the recent floods. Our advice is that, the state BJP leadership should be grateful that somebody is speaking in Manipur’s favour. If they feel otherwise, we would have no other option to assume that it is the state leadership which had been advising the central leadership to ignore Manipur.
