GUWAHATI: Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on August 8 blamed the Congress and its policies of the past for the conflicts in Manipur and elsewhere in the northeast.
Sharing figures of deaths due to ethnic conflicts in Manipur since 1990, he told journalists that the State suffered violence till 2012 during Congress regimes. He said ethnic conflicts claimed the lives of 300 people in 1990, and some 400 in 1997. The new millennium dawned with the death of 95 people in 2001 followed by 140, 105, 200, 220, and 165 in 2003, 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2012.
“I want to clearly say that because of the wrong policies adopted by the Congress during the formative years, the northeastern States have not been able to resolve various disputes that exist from the time India attained freedom,” Dr. Sarma said.
“They [the Congress] created situations and put provisions in the Constitution. They either created safeguards in the Constitution which are creating various issues and problems among the communities or they failed to nip these conflicts in the bud,” he said. The Chief Minister asked the Congress to analyse its wrong policies that have made Manipur burn today.
“The sole responsibility is with the Congress. The party must remember that during all these violent activities, none of their Prime Ministers visited Manipur or tried to give a healing touch,” he said, defending Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s silence until the viral video of two Kuki women being paraded naked shook the nation
Dr. Sarma also said no central Congress Minister ever visited Manipur and stayed there for three nights or more. He was referring to the visits by Home Minister Amit Shah and his deputy Nityanand Rai to the riot-hit State.
Assam violence
Without naming Congress leader Gaurav Gogoi, he said an Assam MP claimed former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had visited Assam’s Kokrajhar during communal violence. He said Assam experienced communal violence in 2008 and in 2012.
“In 2008, an estimated 64 people were killed, 3,211 houses were burnt, 115 were injured and 11,690 others were affected in Darrang and Udalguri districts. There are no records suggesting Manmohan Singh visited Assam at that point in time,” Dr. Sarma said, adding Dr. Singh did visit Kokrajhar in 2012 but only for an hour.
“That did not resolve the problem. The conflict was resolved when at the initiative of the Intelligence Bureau, I took Bodo and Muslim leaders to Delhi and a discussion had taken place in the presence of the then Union Home Secretary, R.K. Singh,” he said.
