NEW DELHI: Members of the opposition in the parliamentary standing committee on Home staged a walkout during a meeting on Thursday. The committee's chairperson, Brijlal, denied their request to discuss the situation in Manipur, which led to their protest.
During the meeting, which aimed to address prison reforms in Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Andhra Pradesh, Derek O'Brien from the TMC, and Digvijaya Singh and Pradip Bhattacharya from the Congress party jointly submitted a letter to Brijlal. They asserted that, as committee members, they could not overlook the situation in Manipur.
The signed letter from all three MPs emphasized that it was their moral and constitutional obligation, as members of the Department Related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs, to urgently discuss the matter with utmost sincerity.
Addressing Brijlal, they highlighted his own experience as a senior police officer and appealed to his understanding of the gravity of the situation in Manipur. They stressed the need for healing and an end to the violence in the state, emphasizing that elected representatives must not turn a blind eye to these issues.
The MPs further mentioned that they had previously written to the Chairman, requesting an urgent meeting of the Committee to discuss Manipur. However, their demand was not accepted, and they were informed that this issue would not be taken up for discussion in July. They expressed their disagreement with the evasion of responsibility and their decision to walk out of the meeting was a clear stand against it.
According to sources, the three MPs are unlikely to attend the two other scheduled meetings this month. Before leaving, they also urged BJP MP Biplab Deb, who hails from the Northeast, to join them in their protest. O'Brien and Singh had previously written to Brijlal, urging him to hold a meeting specifically to discuss the situation in Manipur. However, due to the scheduling of three meetings on prison reforms in July, the chairperson informed them separately about the inability to accommodate an urgent discussion on Manipur.
The meeting was attended by a total of seven members, including the chairman. Since May 3, the ethnic violence in Manipur has resulted in the deaths of nearly 120 people and left more than 3,000 injured.
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