OUR CORRESPONDENT
SHILLONG: A day after the National People’s Party (NPP) withdrew its support for the Manipur government led by Biren Singh, national president and Meghalaya Chief Minister, it stated that this was done specific to the present Manipur Chief Minister.
“If we see that there is a change in the leadership and there is a positive step forward to find a resolution (to the Manipur crisis) and we can constructively cooperate and contribute in ensuring that peace and normalcy will return, we will be happy to work. But we will see the situation, and it is difficult to say right now,” Sangma told reporters on the sidelines of a programme.
He said that at the moment the MLAs and party leaders in Manipur strongly feel that the NPP has lost confidence in Biren Singh as the chief minister.
Sangma said that in the last one and a half years, various incidents have taken place in Manipur wherein the houses of MLAs were vandalized even as legislators were physically attacked.
“It’s really unfortunate that such kinds of things have happened. It’s not the way forward that we can find solutions, but we can understand that the sentiments of the people are running very high. Though these actions may not be planned, it does happen since emotions are running high,” the NPP national president said.
Sangma also said that he was hopeful that serious note should be taken of what’s happening and positive steps would be taken to see that normalcy would return and peace and law and order would be restored.
He said that as the second largest party in Manipur, the NPP is happy to cooperate and work in a positive way to find a solution to this problem.
The NPP national president also said that the party in Manipur was supporting the Biren Singh government since the beginning of the conflict, in the hope that the situation improves, but in the past week it only deteriorated.
Sangma also said that he has been discussing the Manipur situation with a lot of central leaders, including those from the BJP.
He said that during the discussions he stated that there is a need to create confidence-building measures and trust in the system.
“Because of the trust deficit, the overall actions being taken are not reaching a logical conclusion, and hence we have been stressing that some kind of trust-building measures must be taken from the centre as well as state governments to be able to create the environment for actions to have positive results,” Sangma said.
He said that this was not done earlier, but the NPP was hopeful that things would improve, but it was not so.
“With things deteriorating in the last week, we have lost confidence in the current leadership there under Biren Singh, and it will be difficult to support his government,” Sangma said.
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