New Delhi: The Congress party demanded the resignation of the country’s home minister Amit Shah, asking him to claim responsibility for the deepening crisis in Manipur, on Tuesday, November 19.
“The double-engine government has failed and has been derailed. The Home Minister is directly responsible. We want the Home Minister to resign because it is his responsibility,” – All India Congress Committee spokesperson Jairam Ramesh said in the press conference that was held at the party headquarters in Delhi.
The Congress also urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to visit the violence-hit state before the Parliament session this month.
“From May 3, 2023, Manipur has been burning and Prime Minister Modi visited various countries of the world, and gave sermons, but could not find time to visit Manipur. So, our first demand is that the PM should take time out before the Parliament session to visit Manipur and meet political parties, politicians, civil society groups, and people in relief camps there,” Jairam Ramesh said.
He said the Congress also demands that the prime minister should meet an all-party delegation from Manipur and then also call an all-party meeting to be called at the national level.
The Congress also alleged that the prime minister has “outsourced” Manipur to the home minister, who has failed the state, along with Manipur chief minister Biren Singh.
“There is a strange ‘jugalbandi‘ between the home minister and the failed CM. Why the home minister has not taken cognizance of the CM’s failures and why has he been attempting to save him?” Ramesh said.
The BJP got 32 out of 60 seats in the 2022 polls but within 15 months Manipur began to burn, Jairam Ramesh said, highlighting the BJP-led state and the union government going out of control and giving in to violence.
“The pain of Manipur is the pain of the country. More than 300 people have died and over 60,000 have been displaced. It is a story of the complete failure of the double-engine government,” AICC spokesperson said.
Manipur Congress chief K Meghachandra Singh alleged that there is unprecedented turmoil and “complete anarchy” prevailing under the double-engine government and that Biren Singh has no right to continue as Manipur chief minister.
He alleged that there is no law and order at all. It is very painful what the entire people of Manipur have to endure. Abductions of innocent people and killing of innocent people, particularly women and children, is very unfortunate, he said.
“We can recall the statement of Narendra Modi ji in February 2017 when he said in an election campaign, that those who cannot ensure peace in Manipur, have no right to govern the state. I want to ask the PM is the double-engine government maintaining law and order,” he said.
He said Manipur is a state in the unit of India and asked why Modi is “neglecting” Manipur which is becoming a forgotten state by this “Modi regime”.
“The state has become headless; there is no leader who can take out the state from this violence and unrest,” he said.
Violence has continued to rock the state as offices of the Congress and the BJP have been ransacked in the hill district of Jiribam where an unidentified body was found earlier.
The incidents occurred after irate mobs set fire to the residences of three BJP legislators, one of whom is a senior minister, and a Congress MLA in various districts of Imphal Valley where an indefinite curfew has been clamped.
Security forces also foiled the attempt of the agitators to storm the ancestral residence of the Manipur chief minister on Saturday evening.
The Congress has been attacking the prime minister for not visiting Manipur, besides slamming the Centre for its handling of the situation in the ethnic strife-torn northeastern state.
More than 220 people have been killed and thousands rendered homeless in ethnic violence between Imphal Valley-based Meiteis and adjoining hills-based Kuki-Zo groups since May last year.
(With inputs from PTI)
