Trinamool Congress (TMC) lawmaker Mahua Moitra on Thursday asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to remove Manipur chief minister N Biren Singh and address the situation in the ethnic violence-hit northeastern state.
“I do not know what is more unfortunate that the Prime Minister does not address the Manipur issue in the House or does not go to Manipur to reassure the petrified people,” she said while speaking in Lok Saba during the debate on the non-confidence motion against the government. She blamed the Bharatiya Janata Party’s “majoritarian bravado” for destroying Manipur. “We are not going to be bullied.”
Moitra underlined the motion was more about confidence in India. She added it is less of a no-confidence motion as it was not brought to defeat the government by numbers but to resurrect India’s founding principles such as secularism which the government has buried six feet under.
“Most no-confidence motions are negative motions moved with a moderate probability to bring down the government of the day. We know that it is not even a possibility... we do not have the numbers,” she said. “This motion would not succeed in the House but the large motion must succeed and it will when the people of India have their say soon.”
She said the Manipur issue is mired in silence and the government’s false equivalencies. “The issue in Manipur is of a hate crime of a particular community where is understood that police personnel of one community possibly the same community as the chief minister handed over women of another community to be raped by a mob and made every attempt to prevent those women for seeking justice.” She said it is an atmosphere of civil war that has rarely been seen in India in the past few decades.
{{/usCountry}}She said the Manipur issue is mired in silence and the government’s false equivalencies. “The issue in Manipur is of a hate crime of a particular community where is understood that police personnel of one community possibly the same community as the chief minister handed over women of another community to be raped by a mob and made every attempt to prevent those women for seeking justice.” She said it is an atmosphere of civil war that has rarely been seen in India in the past few decades.
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