All the men from DelhiUnderstanding the reality
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If it were not for the ring of tragedy written all over it, the state that Manipur finds itself in today would have elicited guffaws from all over. The popularly elected Government continues to be in place, but it should be more than obvious that it is Delhi which is calling the shots. A neat arrangement one may say for it seems to fit the agenda of Delhi perfectly. Let the popularly elected Government continue in office but for all practical purposes render it toothless and it seems to be working perfectly fine with the Delhi mandarins. The Chief Minister is co-operating is the line that Union Home Minister Amit Shah had once used while talking on Manipur during the earlier days of the ongoing conflict and one wonders whether this had anything to do with the manner in which the Centre ensured that all the key posts are manned by men who it has picked. So while Manipur continues to reel under attacks from different directions, there is the Security Advisor, who is also the Chairman of the Unified Command overlooking the law and order situation in the State. By convention, the posts of the Chief Secretary and the DGP are filled by officers who the Chief Minister of a State deems fit to occupy, but in Manipur it is a case of the Centre deciding who should be the Chief Secretary and the DGP. So when Manipur came under the murderous onslaughts of Kuki militants, Delhi lost no time in rushing in Rajiv Singh of the Tripura cadre and who at one point of time served as the IGP of the CRPF as the police chief of strife torn Manipur. This was shortly after violence exploded in all its ugliness on May 3, 2023. Nowhere is it evident that Rajiv Singh was appointed the DGP with the blessings of Chief Minister N Biren. In other words it was sort of like Delhi stepping in and putting the men it had picked to man the key posts. It was the same thing when senior IAS officer Vineet Joshi was named the Chief Secretary of Manipur with the hands of the Centre palpably clear in the appointment. Now with Joshi back at Delhi, it is again Delhi which seems set to name the next person to occupy the position of Chief Secretary. The picture is clear. All the key posts in Manipur are now filled with men handpicked by Delhi starting from the Security Advisor to the DGP and very soon the Chief Secretary. A new Governor has already been named and everything seems to fall into a pattern. With nothing clear on whether Article 355 has been imposed or not, no one knows for sure to who the Chief Secretary reports, whether the Chief Minister or the Union Home Ministry which in this case could be the Union Home Secretary. Likewise no one knows to who the DGP reports, whether to the Chief Minister or to the Security Advisor. And it is amid this confusion that Manipur continues to burn.
There has to be a reason for the confusion and the more one thinks over it the more one is inclined to believe that the confusion could be engineered. A look at the scenario underlines this. While no one seems to know what exactly is happening, other than the fact that the ongoing clash has already claimed over 250 lives, Delhi has been meticulous in sending all its hand picked men to fill key posts in the State. Per se there should be nothing wrong with this, but when this is seen and understood as moves made to show that the wings of the Chief Minister have been clipped, then one obviously starts smelling a rat. And this is where it is surprising to see that the Government at Imphal continues to sing paeans to New Delhi while there is nothing to show that anything is being done to take Manipur to the road of normalcy. As former Chief Justice of the High Court of Manipur Siddharth Mridul put it so succinctly during a one day discussion programme at New Delhi on December 24, ‘Nobody seems to be in command of the vessel’ before conveying ‘there is somebody interested in keeping the pot boiling...’ Who that somebody could be is the interesting part.
There has to be a reason for the confusion and the more one thinks over it the more one is inclined to believe that the confusion could be engineered. A look at the scenario underlines this. While no one seems to know what exactly is happening, other than the fact that the ongoing clash has already claimed over 250 lives, Delhi has been meticulous in sending all its hand picked men to fill key posts in the State. Per se there should be nothing wrong with this, but when this is seen and understood as moves made to show that the wings of the Chief Minister have been clipped, then one obviously starts smelling a rat. And this is where it is surprising to see that the Government at Imphal continues to sing paeans to New Delhi while there is nothing to show that anything is being done to take Manipur to the road of normalcy. As former Chief Justice of the High Court of Manipur Siddharth Mridul put it so succinctly during a one day discussion programme at New Delhi on December 24, ‘Nobody seems to be in command of the vessel’ before conveying ‘there is somebody interested in keeping the pot boiling...’ Who that somebody could be is the interesting part.