Manipur Needs A New Chief Minister
The India Commentary view
View all posts by this Author
By Our Editorial Team
First publised on 2023-07-21 02:41:10
About the Author
The India Commentary view
View all posts by this Author
After the emergence of the horrific, two-and-a-half month old video from Manipur that showed a mob parading two women naked, it is clear that N Biren Singh has lost all rights to remain chief minister. The state has seen misgovernance of gigantic proportions during the ethnic strife that has engulfed it. Apart from taking wrong decisions, the Biren Singh government is guilty of sitting on the zero FIR lodged by the victims as if nothing had happened.
The irony is that after the video emerged, Biren Singh said that his government has taken suo moto cognizance of the incident. Was he not aware that the FIR had already been filed and his administration had ignored it? Why does it always take horrific visuals to be made public and the outrage that follows to stir administrations into action in such cases? Biren Singh has also reportedly said that 100s of similar incidents have happened. Is that an excuse not to act in such cases? Or is it a compelling reason to act swiftly in all such cases so that women are not victimized?
There is no rule of law in Manipur despite several all party and citizen's groups meetings held by home minister Amit Shah when he visited the state last month. That clearly shows that decisions taken then have not been implemented by the administration which has clearly not been able to take all stakeholders on board to bring peace in the troubled state. It is a colossal failure of governance and the buck stops with Biren Singh.
The Centre must allow a new chief minister to begin with a clean slate, involve all stakeholders, follow a zero-tolerance policy towards violence and convince the people that the interests of all tribes and class of people will be taken into consideration before taking any decisions in the future. The present administration has shown that it is incapable of doing this. It must go.
