Lok Sabha: Mahua Moitra launches stinging attack, says no-confidence motion to break ‘omerta’ on Manipur | India News

NEW DELHI: As fireworks continued in Lok Sabha on day-three of the no-confidence motion debate on Thursday, TMC member Mahua Moitra, launched a stinging attack on the government saying the opposition’s no-confidence motion was actually “have confidence in INDIA (alliance) motion” and aimed at breaking the “omerta” on Manipur.

Moitra said, “We are here to ask questions in our ‘tum abhi chup raho republic’ – where the honourable PM (Modi) tells the governor ‘chup raho’, where we as elected members are routinely told ‘chup raho’. This motion is to break omerta, this code of silence in Manipur, the most pressing issue of the day on which we are all supposed to ‘raho chup’,” while participating in the debate.

“I don’t know what is more unfortunate that the hon’ble Prime Minister refuses to come to this House, of which he is an elected member, to answer to us on Manipur or that he refuses to go to Manipur to reassure petrified people that peace and reconciliation are his mission,” she lashed out.

Hitting out at the treasury benches for making “vitriolic comments” about why only Manipur, what about the instances of rape and murder in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal, Moitra clarified why Manipur was different from the rest. “We (opposition) in turn have felt compelled to ask what about the violence in Haryana. I want to tell this House that Manipur is … The issue of Manipur is of a hate crime against a particular community where it is understood that the police personnel of one community, possibly the same community as of the chief minister, handed over women of another community to be raped and pillaged by a mob and made every attempt to prevent those women from seeking justice,” she alleged.

Listing the impact of the three-month-long violence — “6,500 FIRs, 4,000 houses destroyed, 60,000 people displaced, 150 people dead, 300 places of worship destroyed – she asked, “which state outside wartime or natural calamity has seen this.”
“Stop your whataboutery, stop your false equivalences, address the problem, Hon’ble Prime Minister!… the BJP’s majoritarian bravado is destroying a state and tearing apart its people,” she said, adding, “people have lost faith in the Prime Minister.”
Interestingly, independent MP Naba Kumar Sarania (Kokrajhar-Assam), JMM MP Vjay Hansdak and Thomas Chazhikadan (Kerala Congress-M) made very sharp attack at the government.

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Sarania said he was neither NDA nor INDIA, yet he felt what had happened in Manipur should never have happened and held PM responsible for it, while pleading to both sides in the House to come together and resolve it.
Hansdak said, as a tribal he blamed the government for insulting a tribal and women by “not inviting President Droupadi Murmu for inauguration of the new Parliament building,” and hence it (new Parliament) would always be seen by him as a symbol of that insult.” He also talked about the rampant burning of churches in Manipur, saying it happens in BJP ruled states. Kottayam MP Thomas, took that point ahead by saying that Christians saw hope in the PM when he went to church in Delhi for Easter this year and later met with Christian community leaders in Kerala, but it has all turned into “disappointment” at the way churches have been burnt in Manipur.

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Watch This no-confidence motion is to break this code of silence on Manipur, says Mahua Moitra