Cong ridicules BJP blaming party for crisis
Source: Chronicle News Service
Imphal, July 09 2023:
Congress party rid-iculed the BJP's contention that the current crisis in the state is due to misrule by the then Congress government while terming the turmoil as fallout of the failed gov-ernance of BJP.
Addressing a press con-ference at Congress Bhawan here on Sunday, Manipur Pradesh Congress Commit-tee (MPCC) vice-president L Tilotama strongly condemned BJP for shifting the blame on Congress for the current crisis, which she said is due to the BJP mishandling the situation.
She said that the BJP government has totally failed in the state and there's no significant achievement of the BJP government.
The vice president asserted that the Congress has nothing to do with the violence while pointing out it is primarily the statement issued by eight BJP MLAs and two from KPA that inflamed the situation.
After the violence broke out, the BJP government did nothing to stop it.
They also did not take action against the BJP MLAs.
Moreover, there are reports of BJP using Kuki mil-itants under So0 agreement in elections to secure their seats, she said.
RIP is blaming Congress of signing the So0 agreement at the first place but BJP seems to forget that there were no incidents of these militant groups violating ground rules or committing crime in as-sociation with illegal immi-grants.
Congress ensured that the militant groups strictly adhered to the ground rules, Tilotama said while urging BJP Manipur Pradesh pres-ident A Sharda to digest the So0 ground rules first and analyse the situation under BP rule.
The main objective of initiating the agreement was to make them lay down arms and bring them to the mainstream while upholding the integrity of Manipur, she said.
Tilotama further recalled the death of nine Kuki protes-tors in Churachandpur in 2015 after the then Congress gov-ernment passed three bills for protection of the state's peo-ple, and said that the bodies remained unclaimed for al-most a year but no communal clash happened at that time.
There were normal movement of people from both commu-nities in hills and valley.
No houses were burned and no follow-up incidents occurred due to the strict enforcement of So0 ground rules by the then government, she main-tained.
Substantiating her claims over misrule by the BJP, 11- lotama said that following the vandalism and act of arson in Churachandpur on April 27, police arrested 21 rioters only for an MLA from Chu-rachandpur district to call up party's Manipur in-charge Sambit Patra over the phone and get the rioters released without the knowledge of the chief minister.
Regarding the So0 ground rules, she said that the agree-ment is renewed every year and the BJP government can always amend the ground rules at the time of renewal.
Moreover, the BJP govern-ment also brought another militant group under So0 in December 2022 .
As for the current crisis, chief minister himself had stated that there
were lapses on the part of the government and union MoS for external affairs RK Ranjan had also stated that the law and order and administration of the state has totally failed.
It is rather a lame excuse for BJP to divert its fault to Con-gress, she said.
Tilotama also asked the government and BJP to use its resources in controlling the violence to restore peace and save the state and its youth from drugs instead of blaming Congress for everything.
Con-gress did not involve drugs in its politics unlike BJP, she alleged while citing the case of releasing drug kingpin Luk-hosei Zou, who was caught red-handed along with huge consignment of drugs.
She also termed the visit of union home minister Amit Shah to the state as a vacation trip as he failed to curb the violence till date.
Instead of controlling the violence, the union home minister went back by declaring ex -gratia, she said.
"Let's keep politics for the election and not in this crucial situation," she stressed while questioning the whereabouts of the BJP government's tall claim of harmonious hill-valley re-lationship.
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