Check gate closure: Boon or bane for Manipuri drivers?
- The People's Chronicle Editorial :: May 21, 2022 -

WITH the stated objective of foiling illegal collection of money from the vehicles at check gates and other locations, the Nagaland government has decided to close all police and other check gates, except the existing inter-state check gates.

The decision of the government of the neighbouring state to forego checking of vehicles, other than at the designated gates on the borders with Assam and Manipur, will undoubtedly facilitate smooth movement of passenger and goods carriers from Manipur.

However, to those organisations or outfits, which have been asserting that levying tax on vehicles plying through Nagaland is the right of the de-facto 'governments', closure of the check gates is unlikely to be acceptable for it's an open secret that collecting tax from Manipur vehicles has been the main source of funding for these organisations or outfits.

Torching of vehicles transporting commercial goods, opening fire at trucks of varied shapes and sizes, and killing of drivers, to name a few instances of unwanted incidents in the past many years along the Imphal-Dimapur section of the national highway, stand testimony to armed outfits running a parallel government in this part of the world.

Besides armed outfits, this highway stretch has been a haven for rogue elements to make some easy money with the vehicles and drivers being their prime targets.

It is on record that over 250 drivers and assistant drivers (handymen) of Manipur have lost their lives either to road accidents, assault by armed miscreants and agitation supporters while many cases of brutal thrashings for defying payment of unauthorised have gone unreported due to fear of reprisal.

It's an open secret that looting or collection of unauthorised tax by armed groups which are either bound by peace deal signed with the government or still waging war against the establishment view thousands of commercial vehicles plying everyday along the national highways as the easiest means to fund and sustain their nefarious activities.

Thus, it is but natural that transport operators would be in a quandary on whether the order of the Nagaland government for the closure of all the check gates with immediate effect to prevent and curb the illegal collection of money from vehicles by any entity or individual could guarantee safe passage along the national highway.

While it is crystal clear that the government of Nagaland is determined to curb the illegal collection of money from the vehicles, absence of police check gates in the mountainous section of the route might constrain the outfits relying on taxes from Manipur vehicles to deploy their cadres/activists at isolated pockets to ensure that owners and transport operators continue to fill their coffer.

In such a scenario, the drivers would only be made the sitting ducks for the armed elements.

As the Nagaland government can't be expected to provide fool-proof security to the Manipuri drivers, the transport operators will either have to heed diktats of the armed outfits and recoup the loss from the general consumers through hiking prices of goods or take the Imphal-Jiribam route, which is lengthy, narrow and not yet up to the standard of a national highway in-spite of its supposed improvement by the government in the last few years.