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Hours after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday accused the government of having “murdered Bharat Mata” in Manipur and elsewhere, and asked it to deploy the Indian Army to stem the violence in the Northeastern state, Union Home Minister Amit Shah rejected the Opposition’s demand that the government sack the state’s chief minister and impose President's Rule.
The home minister said Article 356 was invoked when the state government did not cooperate, which wasn’t the case.
Speaking on the second day of the debate on the no-confidence motion in the Lok Sabha and his first detailed comments on the situation in Manipur, Shah blamed the Manipur High Court’s order of March 27, which became public on April 19, recommending Scheduled Tribe status for the Meiteis, as the spark that lit the fire to an already tense situation in the state. He said the Meiteis were concerned about the perceived demographic changes in the state after Kuki refugees from Myanmar had come to stay in the jungles.
Shah said 152 people had been killed in ethnic violence in Manipur from May 3 until now, with 107 recorded in May. Of those 67 were during the first three days of violence from May 3 to May 5. The home minister said violence in Manipur had subsided and appealed to the Opposition to desist from fanning the embers. He said the government had begun fencing the 600-km-long unfenced border and identifying migrants.
Hitting back at the Opposition, Shah repeated Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s early-morning tweet to mark the anniversary of the Quit India Movement, which started on this day in 1942.
“Today, India is saying in one voice: Corruption Quit India. Dynasty Quit India. Appeasement Quit India,” he said, a swipe at the 26 Opposition parties which announced the Indian National Inclusive Developmental Alliance, or INDIA, as the name of their new formation on July 18.
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Modi has said nepotism and corruption are the hallmarks of these parties.
The home minister said the Prime Minister had regularly inquired about the situation in Manipur, even phoning him at four in the morning. Shah said he (Shah) spent three days and three nights in the state while his junior minister Nitayanand Rai was stationed there for 21 days.
He listed the achievements of the nine years of the Modi government and how the Congress governments had ignored the northeastern region.
Earlier in the day, Gandhi, making his first speech after his membership of the Lok Sabha was restored, called the ruling party members “traitors” and criticised the Prime Minister for not visiting Manipur because “he (Prime Minister) does not consider the state part of India”.
“You are sprinkling kerosene everywhere. You sprinkled kerosene in Manipur and then added fire to it. You are now trying the same thing in Haryana. You are attempting to burn the country everywhere. You are murdering Bharat Mata throughout the country,” he said, referring to the recent communal clashes in Gurugram and Nuh.
The former Congress chief also alleged the Prime Minister listened to only two people, Shah and Gautam Adani, just as Ravan heeded the advice of only two persons -- Meghnad and Kumbhakarna.
“Hanuman didn’t burn down Lanka; Ravan’s arrogance did. Ravan was not killed by Ram but by his arrogance,” Gandhi said.
“You have divided Manipur into two parts… you have broken up Manipur,” Gandhi said, narrating his experience of visiting relief camps in the violence-hit state.
“As long as you do not stop violence in Manipur, you are murdering my mother,” he said. In his 30-minute speech, Gandhi said only the Indian Army could bring peace to Manipur.
On why he embarked on the Bharat Jodo Yatra, Gandhi said, “The yatra is still not over ... Many people asked me after it started, ‘Rahul, why did you walk? What is your aim?’ I did not know why I wanted to walk, but I soon realised that it was to understand what I love and for what I am willing to die and go to Modi ji’s jail -- the thing for which I bore abuse for 10 years, I wanted to understand that,” he said.
In his speech, Shah questioned the timing of the video of two women in Manipur being paraded unclad surfacing on social media. The footage of the May 4 incident appeared on July 19, a day before the Monsoon Session of Parliament began. Later, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh tweeted that Shah’s comment was “shameful” and that he was “only accepting his own incompetence” by claiming that intelligence agencies did not know about the existence of such a video.
Ramesh and other Congress leaders tweeted that the RSS actively opposed the Quit India Movement and it was ironic that its ideological descendants were now speaking on it.
Speaking immediately after Gandhi’s speech, Union Minister Smriti Irani, who had defeated him in Amethi in 2019, “condemned” that “someone talked about the murder of Bharat Mata, and Congress leaders were thumping desks”.
