Vanchit Bahujan Aaghadi (VBA) President Prakash Ambedkar.
Credit: PTI Photo
Mumbai: Slamming the Narendra Modi-led NDA government over its handling of the violence in Manipur, Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi founder Prakash Ambedkar said that the BJP-RSS is importing their “ethnic cleansing model” from Gujarat to the north-east Indian state.
Besides, Ambedkar also hit out at the Congress for only “fake sympathy”.
Lawyer-politician-activist, Ambedkar, who is the grandson of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, is a two-time Lok Sabha MP from Akola in Maharashtra and a one-time Rajya Sabha member.
“The BJP and RSS imported their ethnic cleansing model from Gujarat to Manipur. The Christian Kukis were systematically massacred and their tribal community criminalised in the mainstream media handled by the BJP and RSS,” Ambedkar said.
“Congress lent a word of fake sympathy to the people of Manipur in the elections for votes, without taking a political stand for the massacred Christian Kukis, and, after the elections, the Congress adopted the BJP's terminology of criminalising the Christian Kukis when ethnic clashes began again,” he said.
“The Kukis have been cheated and abandoned by both the BJP and Congress,” he said.
According to Ambedkar, this is not the first time that India's Adivasis have been cheated, betrayed and abandoned by the BJP and Congress.
“Both the BJP and Congress are brothers in arms when it comes to looting, neglecting and repressing the Adivasis,” he said.
Hitting out at the government and opposition, Ambedkar said: “I have a question, both the BJP and Congress — What is your intervention policy plan to put an end to the violence in Manipur? Or, are you going to abandon the Adivasis to their fate? Why has the Congress stopped talking about the audio tapes where Manipur Chief Minister Biren Singh himself confessed to orchestrating the genocide against the Kukis?”