Discontent writ large
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: April 07 2015 -

Civil society groups and students in Mizoram have expressed disappointment with the way how the Government of India has been making the State a “dumping ground” for Governors making it a virtual turf for settling political scores.

The discontent was writ large on the wall when Mizo students in Aizawl held a protest demonstration outside Raj Bhavan on April 4 as West Bengal Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi was sworn in to become the seventh Governor of the State in little less than nine months.

The way in which Mizoram has been used by the Central Government to dispose of old political faces within the ruling party or to hack the positions of those appointed by former regimes has not been taken lightly by the students.

As many as five States in the Northeast - Assam, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Manipur and Tripura do not have permanent Governors. Of the five, four States are ruled by Congress while Tripura is ruled by the Left.

Only Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland have regular Governors.

Retired Lt Gen Nirbhay Sharma is Arunachal Pradesh Governor while Padmanabha Balakrishna Acharya is Governor of Nagaland who also holds the additional charge of Tripura and Assam.

The Centre appointed KK Paul, a former Delhi Police Chief as the Governor of Manipur till further orders.

The current situation arose after the then Mizoram Governor Vakkom B Purushothaman was asked to go to Nagaland in July, 2014.

Purushothaman resigned and stated that "Governors cannot be treated like clerks." Former Gujarat Governor Kamla Beniwal was then transferred to Mizoram but she was sacked within a month.

Maharashtra Governor K Sankaranarayanan was then transferred to Mizoram but he also quit blaming the Centre for taking a unilateral decision.

Though the appointment of a Governor in a State is the prerogative of the Centre, the political manoeuvring in the whole sequence of events does not need rocket science to understand the inner working of the layered thoughts shaped by New Delhi.

What is even more disturbing is the fact that there has been no perceptible change in the way how any political regimes in New Delhi look at the Northeast region.

While playing the game of political one-upmanship between rivals at the Centre, the positive dynamics of the region have been put in suspension.

Here, it is worth reminding that the Northeast has experienced long spells of instability due to the prolonged military approach to political issues.

Making the region suffer as a result of New Delhi’s failure to grasp the overall situation can only perpetuate post-colonial India’s disorder.

There is the need to adopt new approach by not making the region a battle-ground for settling political scores originating in New Delhi.