BJP, Congress in letter vs letter spat over President’s intervention in Manipur

A fresh war of words erupted between the BJP and Congress on Friday after the latter party’s chief Mallikarjun Kharge wrote a letter seeking President Droupadi Murmu’s intervention in Manipur due to the Centre and state government’s “complete failure” in defusing the ethnic violence.
Countering Kharge’s allegations, BJP national president JP Nadda accused the Congress of pushing an “incorrect, false and politically motivated” narrative on the issue of the violence that erupted between the Imphal Valley-based Meiteis and tribal hills-based Kuki-Zo ethnic groups in May last year.
In his two-page letter to the President on Thursday night, the Congress chief alleged that the people have lost faith in both the Central and Manipur governments, adding that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “refusal” to visit the violence-hit state was “beyond anybody’s understanding”.
“I and my party strongly believe that the deliberate acts of omission and commission, as indeed inordinate inaction on the part of both the Central and state governments, have resulted in complete lawlessness, absence of rule of law, violations of human rights, compromise of national security and suppression of fundamental rights of citizens of our country,” he said.
Referring to Congress MP Rahul Gandhi’s visits to the state, Kharge said that the “Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha has been in Manipur thrice in the last 18 months and I, myself, have visited the state in this period”.
On Friday, in his letter to Kharge, BJP national president Nadda accused the “complete failure and ill-advised strategies” of the previous Congress governments at the Centre and in Manipur in dealing with similar issues in the past, whose repurcussions are being felt even today.
He also said the Congress chief seemed to have forgotten that “not only did your government legitimise the illegal migration of foreign militants to India, the then home minister P Chidambaram had signed treaties with them”.
“These known militant leaders fleeing their country to avoid arrest were wholeheartedly endorsed and encouraged to carry on their destabilising efforts. This complete failure of India’s security and administrative protocols under your government is one of the major reasons why militant and habitually violent organisations are attempting to destroy the hard-won peace in Manipur and push it back several decades into the age of anarchy,” the BJP chied said.
Unlike the Congress, the BJP-led NDA government will not allow this to happen at any cost, he stressed, and added that the governments at the Centre and in Manipur have been working to stabilise the situation and protect people since the initial violence.
Further escalating the war of words, Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh said the BJP national president’s letter was “full of falsehoods and is a 4D exercise – denial, distortion, distraction, and defamation”.
Ramesh tweeted that the people of Manipur yearning for normalcy, peace, and harmony are asking four simple questions: “When will the PM visit the state? How much longer will the CM continue to be inflicted on the state, when a majority of MLAs are not in his support? When will a full-time Governor for the state be appointed? When will the Union Home Minister take responsibility for his abject failures in Manipur?”
The latest BJP-Congress spat comes as Manipur is witnessing a fresh spate of violence triggered by the killing of a woman from the Hmar community, who was set ablaze at her home in Jiribam district on November 7.
Between November 7 to 18, at least 20 people were killed, with 16 separate incidents of violence.
As a result, the Centre has deployed additional security forces to Manipur, with 50 companies of Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF), comprising more than 5,000 personnel.