Selling out Manipur
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: August 26, 2013 -

This may be what they called a good relationship between the State Government and the Centre, but definitely a very bad one for the people of Manipur.

Two weeks after the statement ridiculing State media report on loss of Manipur’s land to Myanmar on account of the border fencing being carried out along Indo-Myanmar International boundary without any proper demarcation, the Ministry Home Affairs, Government of India is learnt to have sought a status report from the Assam Rifles, which is presently entrusted with the task of guarding or selling/buying (whichever way you may look at) the border areas of Manipur.

On the other hand, after ‘parroting’ what the Union Ministry had claimed to be the ignorance of media in Manipur on the ‘International practices and ground level facts’ on border fencing, Chief Minister O Ibobi Singh termed the same media report as ‘malicious’ and made an even taller claim that the ongoing ‘border fencing is being monitored by the State Government and there is no dispute at all’.

But a day after the Ministry reportedly sought a status report on border fencing from the Assam Rifles; the State Cabinet has taken a decision to dispatch an official team to inspect the disputed border fencing. Even the Governor is now said to be in the mood for taking a tour of the disputed border areas.

From all these developments, one can easily make out how the Ministry and the State Government had tried their level best to fool the people of Manipur by deriding the State media for publishing reports allegedly without checking full details on International practices and the ground level facts on border fencing.

It is now amply clear that the Ministry of Home Affairs itself was in the dark and had issued its August 8 statement without understanding the ‘ground level facts’ of the ongoing border fencing along Indo-Myanmar International boundary in Moreh sector of Manipur.

That is the reason why it has sought the status report on the border fencing from the Assam Rifles only after the Myanmarese Army have already got a foothold for construction of its platoon base camp inside the territory of Manipur. Even though the media report on the matter was based on spot assessment at the disputed border area, the assertion of the Ministry officials at Delhi who have hardly taken any interest in the affairs of Manipur in the past was understandable.

But what was really disheartening is the manner in which the Chief Minister of the State and his eleven wise men in the ruling Congress-led Government have been nodding their heads to everything that an indifferent and ignorant Ministry said.

That was surely not good Centre-State relationship, but complete sell out of Manipur and its land.