Check all vehicles decree ! Make UC meaningful
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: December 15 2023 -

No beating around the bush and straight to the point.

This is the Senapati based Naga People’s Organisation (NPO). In making it clear that if the Kangpokpi based Committee on Tribal Unity (CoTU) does not roll back its stand to check each and every vehicle along the Imphal-Dimapur National Highway then all Naga areas would be off limits for the Kuki-Zo people, NPO has delivered a statement pregant with meaning. Simple and straight to the point this was and is for it still stands in the face of the fact that the NPO has not announced any step of watering down its stand.

Unstated but clear in the agenda of checking vehicles along the highway is the call that the highway that connects Manipur to the rest of the country and the world is off limits for the Meiteis.

Along with this is the proclamation that the writ and diktats of CoTU and hence the Kukis run on the highway and this is something which the Nagas are not ready to take lying down.

Recall the staunch opposition raised to the very decision to carve out Kangpokpi from Senapati district and grant it the status of a full fledged district in December 2016.

The stand of NPO is also perfectly in line with the decision adopted and announced by the Tangkhul Naga Long during the earlier days of the ongoing clash that no vehicle taking the Imphal-Ukhrul road should be checked.

Remember there are at least two Kuki settlements along the Imphal-Ukhrul road and Yaingangpokpi, the last settlement before one starts the upward climb to proceed towards Ukhrul, has a fairly large settlement of Kuki people.

Ever since Manipur went up in flames from the evening of May 3 this year, the Imphal-Dimapur line has been off limits for the Meiteis.

Manipur has seen and experienced highway blockade many times in the past, but this is the first time that the ‘blockade’ is targeted towards a particular community.

The exercise of checking and verifying each and every passenger who take this route is nothing but to target the Meiteis and this is where the victim story that has been churned out by the Kuki CSOs and which have been lapped up and told with so much conviction by the media from other parts of the country should be understood.

Talk to any Imphal based travel agency and the one line answer that comes out is ‘No Meitei has ever taken a bus ticket. No Meitei man is behind the driving wheel. No Meitei bus helper or conductor.’

Stretch the questioning a little further and it will come to light that all buses or vehicles owned by Meiteis have stayed off the Imphal-Dimapur route since the evening of May 3.

This is one part of the ugly reality that is Manipur today and one wonders how vehicles can be stopped, checked and passengers verified on the highway so non-chalantly.

It is in knowing that they can check any vehicle, as they deem fit, that the CoTU had sent a written missive to the Naga People’s Organisation that the ‘public of Kangpokpi will check all the vehicles plying on NH-2 with immediate effect’ and it was in response to this particular intimation that the NPO had asked CoTU to roll back its stand and for good effect had asserted, ‘Until the withdrawal of the decision to check all vehicles along NH-2, all Kuki-Zo public are advised not to visit Naga areas to avoid unwanted incidents.’

The written intimations between the two organisations was on December 12 and while it is not yet clear how things stand now, as on December 14 evening and how things will progress, certain points need to be answered.

To be sure, the written communications between the two entities must have come to the notice of the Government and the Unified Command.

Should the forces continue to pull wool over the eyes of the public with the rider that no such activities like stopping and checking vehicles are taking place in the vicinity of its posts ?

Or road opening is not part of their duty and it is up to the police ?

Isn’t there something called sanitising their area of operation ?

And shouldn’t this be done in consultation with other law enforcing agencies, such as the police ?

The presence of an arrangement called the Unified Command should be made more meaningful and this is the time to demonstrate that.