Submission of admission, apology : Pressures of pull and push
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: February 07, 2024 -

Not totally unexpected and the pattern behind the moves should not miss anyone.

Dig a little deeper and it should also be obvious to all those who have been closely following the turn of events since the evening of May 3, 2023.

The three suspended Education Department officials may have pointed the ‘pressure’ finger at the elected representatives, the civil society organisations and student bodies to fraudulently issue the No Objection Certificate to affiliate some schools to the CBSE, bypassing the mandatory nod from the State Government, but what has been left unsaid is also loud and clear.

The unsaid part is, the elected representatives, the civil society organisations and student organisations too must be under ‘intense pressure to pile the pressure on the three officials to go ahead and issue the NOCs’.

And it is on the basis of this ‘pressure’ that the narrative of the clash has been sold to the pen pushers, the fly by night operators who air dash here and file the ‘stories’ they were told to tell to the rest of the world, play the victim card, try and paint the ongoing clash along religious line with the result that stories of ‘minority Christians being persecuted by the majority Hindus’ even made it to the floor of the European Parliament some time back and to give some sort of substance to the manipulated, cooked up stories come up with the Separate Administration call.

It has been lies and more lies since the evening of May 3, 2023 with some even telling the story that tension was already very high between the Kukis and the Meiteis before the said date.

A lie that has been called out with the plain and simple truth that the tension before May 3, 2023 was and should be taken as a clash of idea and perception between the Kukis and the Government of Manipur and not between the Kukis and the Meiteis.

This is why no answer has been forthcoming on why Meitei houses were identified, picked out and set on fire at Torbung and a little later at Churachandpur on May 3 last year.

This is where the Government and everyone should try and read between the lines in the very admission of the three officials of the Education Department that they were made to issue the NOC under duress.

It should also be clear to one and all that the admission and the written apology to the Government would not have been possible without the active participation of those pulling the strings from behind.

A cursory glance at the extracts of the written submission should be more than obvious that they were all prepared under the tutelage of some who have a fair legal knowledge, the terms and language to use.

Clearly the hands pulling the strings cannot be missed and these hands should also be seen and understood in the call for a Separate Administration, officially first raised by the ten Kuki-Zo MLAs.

New Delhi must have also seen and read through the pattern and this is where it becomes imperative for Imphal to take it up from here and see how to present the case of Manipur more forcefully.

And to take the case beyond the NOC issued to the said schools, Imphal need to seriously study why the three Education Department officials should submit such an admission at this point of time.

The pressure from the elected representatives part may also be taken as the point from which the State Government may seriously study what course of action may be initiated against the 10 Kuki-Zo MLAs.

For nine months the State Government has been sleeping over it and perhaps now is the time to understand the pulse of Manipur and see what may be done.

Or will it be a case of waiting for the go ahead signal from New Delhi ?

Even if the latter stands true, it would serve some purpose to spell it out to the people, else the angst will only continue to simmer and it would not do Manipur any good.