Of news makers and others : Unwitting help ?
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: October 19, 2021 -

Thounaojam Brinda makes news.

There is no doubt about it and it is for this very reason why The Sangai Express deemed it fit to carry the story of the police stopping a rally led by her on the front page of the October 18th issue.

The young lady had reasons to feel peeved that the rally was so ‘unceremoniously’ stopped but yet at the same time there are still questions that need to answered.

Was it an election rally ?

This poser is being raised in the backdrop of the fact that talks have been doing the round that she would be contesting the elections and what has added weight to this poser is the fact that after the planned rally was stopped, she did formally announce her plan to enter the election from Yaiskul Assembly Constituency.

If it was an election rally is it morally and legally right for a serving Government employee to lead an election rally ?

If it was not then why wasn’t the refusal of the district administration to grant permission to take out the rally taken to the law Court ?

More importantly what did the Government have to gain by stopping the planned rally ?

There has to be a reason and Covid protocol cannot be a convincing answer for everyone knows how Covid appropriate behaviour is flouted at all political dos.

Didn’t the Government realise that stopping the rally only went to give more publicity to the young police officer ?

Only those who are directly involved in the matter will have the answer, but the answers will not be similar at all, for the Brinda camp will definitely say something else and the Government something else.

Either way nothing good for something known as the backbone of democracy-election which comes once in five years.

In banning the planned rally of the young lady, Yaiskul Assembly Constituency has suddenly been catapulted amongst the Constituencies to watch out for in the Assembly election scheduled in the early part of next year and to the media and the observers, this will make the coming election all that more interesting.

If this was what happened in reality in a part of Imphal on October 17, then can one expect the social media site to remain quiet ?

As news of the planned rally being stopped started doing the round and went viral on the social media, comments galore started appearing on sites such as Facebook and Whatsapp.

The same must have been true on the other platforms too.

Local television channels too lost no time in contacting well known personalities to get their view on the incident and one could see and hear many airing their views and opinion on the incident.

This only went on to help the young lady from Yaiskul Assembly Constituency get more publicity and this is where questions will remain on the wisdom to stop the planned rally.

What could have been a footnote in the media turned out to be a big story, at least to The Sangai Express and why not ?

Here is a young lady, who was at one point of time a decorated police officer having won the Chief Minister’s Police Medal for Gallantry in 2018 for her fight in curbing smuggling activities, particularly drugs but ultimately returning the same award in 2020 after an accused druglord was let off scot free and thereby starting some sort of a cold war with the State Government.

One big reason why Th Brinda makes news and unwittingly the Government seems to be helping her.