Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma. file | Photo Credit: ANI
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Saturday indicated through a series of tweets that former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi took more time than Prime Minister Narendra Modi to respond to the crisis in Manipur more than a decade ago.
Mr Modi was criticized for taking 79 days to respond to caste violence in Manipur after a video surfaced of two Kuki women being stripped naked and allegedly gang-raped by a mob a few days ago.
Taking to the microblogging site on Saturday, Mr. Sarma criticized the Congress for “suddenly showing excessive interest in Manipur” and said it was important to revisit Mr. Singh’s own response to similar crises in the northeastern state.
“The duplicity of the (Congress) party is worrying. During the UPA tenure, Manipur became the blockade capital of the country,” he wrote.
He recalled that during the Congress rule from 2010 to 2017, Manipur experienced highway blockade ranging from 30 days to 139 days a year. He said that during each of these blockades, the prices of petrol and LPG shot up to ₹240 per liter and ₹1,900 per cylinder, turning into a complete humanitarian crisis.
Manipur saw its worst blockade in 2011, which lasted for more than 120 days. He wrote, “In 2011, the then prime minister and UPA chairperson did not utter a word for 123 days when Manipur was burning.”
He said, Mr. Singh was busy in bailing out private companies at that time.
In another tweet, the chief minister said that over 991 civilians and security personnel were killed in Manipur during 2004-2014, when the Congress was ruling the country and the state. “This sad figure has come down by 80% since May 2014,” he claimed.
“The pain caused by the multi-caste conflicts in Manipur has its origins in the flawed policies of the Congress governments during the formative years of the state. It will take time to fix the fault lines created by 7 decades of misgovernance,” Mr. Sarma said.
He claimed that the social fabric of Manipur has improved tremendously since 2014 and the process of resolving the decades-old caste conflicts would be completed under the leadership of Mr. Modi.