Political deadlock since first week of June : Can Manipur afford this ?
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: July 19 2019 -

The stalemate continues. Nothing to suggest that the infighting in the BJP Government has been resolved and no one knows what is going on.

What however stands is the fact that the dissidents are yet to throw in the towel and are still stuck to the stand that a change in leadership be effected.

In the absence of any concrete information coming out, the talk doing the round is, if there is a change or if the matter is to be resolved, then it will be known only after July 26, the day the ongoing Parliamentary session concludes.

So wait till July 26 while the State is caught in a sort of a limbo.

The interesting part is whether Manipur can really afford to remain in such a state of limbo for long.

The stand off is already over a month now, after the Cabinet meet held at Ukhrul in the first week of June and that is a considerable number of days.

And making the Cabinet meeting at Ukhrul all that more remarkable is the fact that of the 12 member Council of Ministers, only 6 attended.

In short a Cabinet meeting in which 50 percent of the Ministers decided to stay away.

This was probably the first indication that not everything is right within the BJP led Government with the Chief Minister not seeing eye to eye with many of his Cabinet colleagues.

Whatever the dissident MLAs may say, it stands that many of them have been camping at Delhi lobbying with the Central leaders to ensure that their demand sees the light of day.

What is interesting to note is the fact that despite the intense fight within, the dissident MLAs are yet to officially project anyone as the man to replace the incumbent Chief Minister.

This could be a political strategy but whatever the case may be, it gives the indication that the dissident MLAs are also not sure who to project.

Not at all a comfortable position and in the midst of the stand off came the unsavoury news of the State running into overdrafts, with the RBI stepping in and banning all Government transactions.

The RBI ban has been lifted but this still does not answer the financial situation of the State Government.

And this is where the Cabinet should be sitting down with officials to discuss how to draw funds from whatever source there may be.

However with the current stand off on, it is hard to entertain the idea of the Cabinet sitting down together and discussing issues which are of importance to the State.

This is all that more important given the fact that there are issues which are staring the State in the face.

The peace process between the NSCN (IM) and the Government of India is on and everything indicates that the peace process is at its final stage with only some details to be worked out.

Isn’t this the time for the State Government to put up a strong case for Manipur to the Centre before the final deal is inked ?

The Framework Agreement of August 3, 2015 has been projected to be the guideline for the final pact, but in the face of the fact that this is a closely guarded secret, anything can happen.

This is the time when political leaders of the State should be awake and sensitive to what is happening and waiting for Delhi to resolve the issue may just explode in the face of the political leaders of Manipur.