Manipur clashes: Congress seeks President’s intervention

A delegation led by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge gave Murmu a memorandum with a 12-point charter of demands to help restore peace and normalcy in Manipur.

Congress communications head Jairam Ramesh later told the media that Manipur is burning due to the BJP’s politics of “divisiveness and polarisation”. He said, “It is intelligence failure, administrative failure and political failure in Manipur.”

During the meeting, the party delegation told the President that there is “serious deficit” in the efforts of the BJP-led state government in containing arson and violence. “If firm action were taken on May 3 evening to prevent the arson in hill districts, the situation would not have deteriorated this badly,” the memorandum stated.

Besides Kharge, the delegation included former chief minister of Manipur Okram Ibobi Singh, senior party leaders K C Venugopal and Mukul Wasnik, former deputy chief minister Gaikhangam and state Congress president Keisham Meghachandra Singh, besides the party’s in-charge for Manipur, Bhakta Charan Das.

The delegation urged Murmu to ask the Centre to “immediately take all possible measures to control and confine all militant groups [including those under Suspension of Operations] and ensure that all armed civilian groups be stopped forthwith by taking appropriate action.”

In the memorandum, the party said the Centre should take steps for rehabilitation of displaced persons and demanded payment of “dignified and reasonable compensation for loss of life, property and all other things concerned to all victims and affected persons”.