New Delhi: Slamming the visiting Opposition alliance for politicising the Manipur issue, BJP leader Sambit Patra on Sunday said there should be no attempts at sensationalism and action should be taken sensitively, news agency ANI reported. He said while the Centre was ready for a debate on the Manipur situation in Parliament, the Opposition was running away from it.
Meanwhile, the delegation from the grand Opposition alliance --- I.N.D.I.A --- on Sunday called on the Manipur Governor on the final day of their two-day visit and tendered a memorandum.
However, coming down heavily on the Opposition delegation, Patra said while Union Home Minister Amit Shah camped in Manipur for three nights and even convened an all-party meeting in the national capital in the interest of restoring peace to the strife-torn Northeast state, the visit by the Opposition MPs, which ended on Sunday, was aimed merely at playing politics.
He said he feared that the Opposition would yet again disrupt both Houses over the Manipur situation as the Parliament reconvenes on Monday.
“Politics should not be done. In sensitive matters, action should be taken with sensibility and there should be no sensationalisation. The Home Minister says that the government is ready to debate Manipur in Parliament but they are running away from it. From tomorrow, politics will begin again. Their strategy will be to disrupt the Parliament,” the BJP national spokesperson said.
Claiming that no other Home Minister under previous governments had spent three nights in Manipur, which has had a history of insurgency, Patra said, “When Home Minister visited Manipur for three days, he called an all-party meeting there and had deliberations with them. He called an all-party meeting in Delhi too. For the first time in the country's politics, the country's Home Minister stayed for three nights in a northeastern state where insurgency was common earlier. But the Opposition MPs went there only to do politics.”
Further hitting out at the Opposition for not fencing the porous border that Manipur shares with neighbouring Myanmar, the BJP leader said, “I'd like to ask the Opposition, you were in power in the northeast for so long. What is the reason that not one even 1 km of fencing was done on the 400 km-long border between Manipur & Myanmar? It is our Govt that did a complete survey; 10 km of fencing has been done & work is underway on the 80 km area. Why was this not done earlier?”
“None of their Home Ministers went to Manipur even for a day for discussion at the time when around 1600 people were killed during their rule -- when there was Naga-Kuki clash, when there was Meitei-Pangal clash, when there was Kuki-Paite clash. They didn't resolve any issue and today they want to do politics,” Patra added.