AFSPA poised to dominate election rhetoric
- The People's Chronicle Editorial :: December 14, 2021 -

PRIOR to the Mon district incidents that claimed the lives of 14 civilians and one security jawan and left 30 others injured, it seemed that the Naga peace talks, differences of opinion among the indigenes over the proposed ADC Bill 2021, demand for inclusion of the Meetei community in the Scheduled Tribes list and sluggish pace of development, to name a few, would have been some dominant issues in the run-up to the 12th Manipur Legislative Assembly election.

However, after firing on the innocent coal miners by the security forces in neighbouring Nagaland on December "sparked angst all over the northeast region, the repeal of the Armed Forces (Special Power) Act, 1958 will unarguably be a top issue in the upcoming Assembly elections scheduled early next year.

With BJP, probably, being the only political party which seems unfazed by the outrageous act of the security forces, the demand for scrapping the pro-military law from the region is poised to see the bitterest slugfest amongst all the parties vying for the 60 assembly seats in the state.

At the moment, the Mon carnage has brought almost all the non-BjP parties, be they in the ruling alliance or in the opposition, on the same platform and started to bash the government over the latter's indecision to take a call on retaining or repealing the controversial AFSPA.

It could be safely stated that before the Mon incident the BJP had all the political momentum with political commentators and survey reports predicting return of the saffron party to power with or without reaching the magic figure on its own.

For the record, in 2014, after gaining the first single-party majority in 30 years in the Lok Sabha, BJP followed up the stupendous performance by retaining power along with bagging one state after another, including all but one state in the northeast which used to be Congress's domain for ages.

Among others, it was PM Modi's focus on economic growth, job creations, good governance, efforts to woo foreign investment and spur manufacturing that appealed to the voters.

While it's too early to have a full picture on why voters would reject the BjP in the upcoming elections, the shrilling demand for withdrawal of the AFSPA apart from the static economic growth would be the main impediment to the party's objective to cruise to power.

As had been the norm in every election, national level leaders would be raking up non-materialisation of the enticing promises by the ruling entity for expediting economic development and generating employment opportunities commensurate with India's burgeoning population at their political events, but these national issues wouldn't matter much to the state's voters other than relieving the region's masses from the brutal effect of AFSPA.

For non-BJP parties it is obvious that they wouldn't dare to ignore the growing pitch for withdrawal of the Act had been corroborated with its allies Naga People's Front and National People's Party too joining the chorus for repealing AFSPA from the north-eastern state.

As Chief minister N Biren has been persistently claiming credit for the semblance of peace and order in the state, where incidents of suspected stage-managed encountered unarguably ceasecf after the Supreme Court ordered investigation into over 1000 cases of alleged fake encounters in a 10-year span, it remains to be seen how BJP would counter the contentions that the government has been indifferent to general consensus that promulgation of AFSPA hasn't been helpful in solving the insurgency problem.

Nevertheless in its bid to appease the masses possibility of the N Biren government ultimately deciding to adopt resolution for the withdrawal of AFSPA from the entire state cannot be ruled for electoral politics is all about keeping the voters in jovial mood at-least till the votes have been cast and counted.