NEW DELHI, Jan. 28 (The Telegraph): The Congress appeared to have outsourced Manipur to local leaders as no senior leader, including AICC president Sonia Gandhi and AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi, campaigned in the northeastern state for tomorrow’s Assembly polls.
This is the first time when no senior Congress leader has campaigned for polls in the militancy-torn state.
Chief minister Okram Ibobi Singh is contesting to retain the hot seat for the third time in a row against a united Opposition with former chief minister and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Radhabinod Koijam at the helm.
More importantly, the absence of campaigning by senior leaders indicates that militant threats have worked and allegations of corruption against Ibobi have embarrassed the high command.
A list of campaigners sent by the AICC to the Election Commission on January 10 included the names of Sonia, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Rahul Gandhi, Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, AICC general secretary Ghulam Nabi Azad, AICC secretaries Maj. Ved Prakash and K. Jayakumar and Luizinho Faleiro, permanent invitee to the Congress Working Committee, in charge of Manipur.
Sources said even Faleiro went quietly and left on Tuesday, two days before the campaigning ended. The rest of the campaigners on the list of 40 leaders were from Manipur.
Faleiro was not available for comment despite repeated calls. Confidence in the Congress’s past successes is claimed to be one of the reasons for this. “Manipur we are winning in any case,” said Prakash, who was pulled out of Manipur and entrusted with work in Punjab polls.
The BJP, on the other hand, has worked aggressively. Star campaigners like Najma Heptullah and Hema Malini campaigned in Thoubal, Ibobi Singh’s stronghold. Heptullah has visited Manipur twice and Rajya Sabha MP Prakash Javadekar has been frequenting the state too.
The absence of senior leaders during campaigning has prompted Opposition parties and discontented former Congressmen to mock the Congress. “Both (Sonia and Rahul) had cold feet in the wake of militant threats,” said N. Biren Singh, a former minister in Ibobi’s cabinet.
The Coordination Committee, an alliance of seven militant groups from the Imphal valley, had released a list of some 1,800 Congress workers, threatening to eliminate them if they worked for the party.
So far, militants have thrown more than two dozen grenades at Congress workers’ houses and offices. Many of them exploded, including one in Imphal this morning. One person was injured in the explosion at the house of former Manipur government official and doctor Bilashini Devi at Thangmeiband in Imphal West district. Her husband had contested the last elections.
Manipur PCC chief Gaikhangam put up a brave face, as he argued that militant threats were not new and Sonia and Singh had visited Imphal last month “on the eve of declaration of election schedule”. “They didn’t come because of paucity of time. They were busy with big states like Uttar Pradesh. It was not because of law and order that they did not come,” he said over phone from Manipur.
Even Ibobi could not campaign in the hill districts where an anti-Congress wave is set to benefit Opposition parties.
The Election Commission today expressed concern over militancy during polls and attacks on personnel on polling duty. It reminded the election machinery in Manipur to ensure peace during polling.
But this has not been the case in the past.
In 2007, Sonia had campaigned in Churachandpur. Earlier, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had campaigned in Manipur, days before he was killed by an LTTE suicide bomber in Sriperambudur. Congress’s R.K Jaichandra Singh was then the chief minister of Manipur.
However, it is not only about leaders from the national capital. Even Ibobi could not campaign in the hill districts where an anti-Congress wave is set to benefit Opposition parties. He could not defuse the tension between ethnic groups such as the Kukis, the Nagas and the Meiteis in the months preceding the elections.