Source: The Sangai Express
Imphal, December 17:
Legislators of the State lobbying for exclusion of Manipur from the ongoing delimitation exercise all over the country are hopeful that their campaign will be successful.
In their campaign to exclude Manipur from the delimitation, the State legislators today called on NDA convenor George Fernandes and CPM leader Basudev Archarya.
The all political party delegation who are now in Delhi meeting central leaders urging for their cause on delimitation issue include Dr L Chandramani and O Joy of MPP, MPCC vice-president Abdul Salam, Congress MLAs E Dwijamani, Th Lokeshore, BJP Manipur unit president Dr Haobam Borbabu and NCP general secretary Sarat.
During the meeting with George Fernandes, the all party delegation pointed out that objection to delimitation process raised by the Northeastern States, particularly Manipur is based on valid ground as the 2001 census report is highly unrealistic.
Implementing delimitation based on faulty census report will be inevitably bring in ill-consequences, they maintained.
Taking note of the rational argument made by the all party delegation, George Fernandes reportedly assured all possible assistance to stall delimitation process in manipur.
Both George Fernandes and Basudev Archarya assured that necessary steps will be initiated to issue an ordinance so as to exclude the four left out NE States from the country wide exercise.
Before making their points to Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and AICC president Sonia Gandhi, the political leaders will urge upon Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee on the same cause.
Even though Chief Minister O Ibobi could not participate in today's meeting with central leaders due to his engagement in NEC meeting, Ibobi will lead the all party delegation in tomorrow's meeting with other central leaders.
So far, all the central political leaders approached by the all party delegation saw through their justified objection and assured necessary help, conveyed the political representatives while exuding confidence that the four left out North Eastern States shall be excluded from the delimitation exercise.