Overlooking one’s own Cabinet decision : BJP cannot afford this
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: August 02 2017 -

Meeyamgi Numit on the 15th of every month. Hill Leaders’ Day on the 10th of every month.

Top this off with the announcement of State BJP vice president M Asnikumar that BJP leaders will visit will Assembly Constituencies of the State regularly for booth level interaction programmes and clearly the BJP is intent on not resting on the feat of having managed to clobber up a coalition Government here but is intent on reaching out to every section of the people.

Couple this with the fact that the BJP led Government has already set up the anti-corruption cell and one can see an attempt to give a new definition to the understanding of opening up the Government to the people.

Top this off with the fact that Chief Minister N Biren is seen to be much more approachable than the previous Chief Minister and clearly the Government seems to have set out on the right track.

The change is such that even mobile phones can now be carried inside the office of the Chief Minister, at least for media persons, and this is a welcome departure from the earlier dispensation.

The effort to reach out to the people is indeed acknowledged and this will stand the BJP in good stead, especially when the next Lok Sabha election comes in 2019, though the fact that Manipur gets to send only two MPs to the lower House of the Parliament is another matter.

However keeping its doors open and actually delivering on its promises are two entirely different things and this is a point which should not blow over the head of Chief Minister N Biren and his men in the Government.

And this is where the decision of the Government to appointment someone who has retired as the Director of Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Medical Sciences (JNIMS) came like a bucket of cold water after a hot shower.

This observation is made against the backdrop of the Cabinet decision taken on April 3 this year not to engage anyone who has retired from service and one wonders how the BJP led Government could afford to overlook the very decision it had adopted not too long back.

The Sangai Express has nothing personal in underlining this observation but this very decision smacks of a situation where the Government cannot tell what its right hand is doing from its left hand.

Certainly the BJP led Government can do better than this.

In all probability, the decision not to re-engage retired officers was taken to be different from the previous Congress Government which is known to have re-appointed some retired Government employees/officers and if not for anything else then it was this point which went down well with the people as a whole.

Even a stop gap arrangement, as in the case of JNIMS, is not acceptable in the face of its own decision and this is a point which the BJP led Government may sincerely look into.

Manipur certainly does not need any wishy washy decision that can be easily tweaked and toyed around.