Aheli Moitra
Imphal | January 22
As the elongated days of election campaigning get longer, with each day affecting voter decisions, physical threats to the democratic process aren’t far behind. Inching closer to the 10th Manipur Assembly Election, to be held on January 28, people, especially in deep villages, continue to live in fear of force being used as the date nears. In spite of a large military presence in the State, security continues to remain lax in some of these areas. This threat perception is not completely unfounded after two incidents occurred in a town with apparent tight security.
On January 20, around 7:00 pm, a hand grenade was found unpinned but defunct in the front yard of the Ukhrul town office of Samuel Risom, Naga People’s Front (NPF) candidate from 44 Ukhrul Assembly Constituency. The police was called in immediately to handle the situation but it hasn’t been established yet who lobbed the grenade or when. “Obviously someone is trying to threaten to keep us from campaigning ardently but we’re not afraid and will continue to reach out to the people to spread the right message so that they make the right choice of leaders,” said Risom, who was away campaigning in one of his constituency villages at the time. 44 Ukhrul constituency has 59 polling stations (around 46 villages) with an electorate count of nearly 43,000. A human rights lawyer by profession, Risom hails from Hundung village in Ukhrul and has been actively campaigning for NPF, highlighting the persecutions that the people of the hills have faced from being part of the Manipuri polity.
In a second incident on January 20, around 8:00pm, General Secretary of All Naga Students’ Association, Manipur (ANSAM), Seth Shatsang, was ambushed by 10 unidentified young men near the Talui Junction in Ukhrul and pulled out of his car, followed by a quarrel between them. Shatsang is part of one of the five election monitoring units that have been set up by the United Naga Council (UNC) in the Naga hill districts of Manipur that is garnering support for the NPF. The incident is under investigation but Shatsang was unavailable for comment.
With polling booth security tightened by the Election Commission of India (ECI), booth capturing and intimidation of voters on the day of polls, around the booth, might be a difficult task this year. Of the 179 polling stations in Ukhrul district, 35 have been classified as “sensitive” while 144 have been raised to the bar of “hyper sensitive”. This means more security forces around the booths, which in turn means that pre-poll use of force will be high on the card if money and issues haven’t been able to mould the electorate to throw up desired results in pre-poll guesswork. The overarching threat to electoral politics refuses to end with various parties all over Manipur being continuously under threat from various rebel groups either for participating in the Indian democratic process, or for supporting one ethno-nationalist discourse over the other, even as people in Manipur continue to suffer under the pressure of stunted development which is, ironically, not seen as connected to the
election process.
