Congress calls it ‘pit stop’, says should’ve come earlier

The Congress on Saturday criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Manipur as a “pit stop” and an “exercise in tokenism”, and that it should have been undertaken much earlier.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge termed the “merely three-hour visit as farce and a grave insult to the wounded people”. He said the planned roadshows in Imphal and Churachandpur were “nothing but a cowardly escape to not hear the plight of people in relief camps”. “Your three-hour pit stop in Manipur is not compassion, but farce, tokenism and a grave insult to the wounded people,” he said in a post on X.

46 trips abroad, not one to state

Nearly 300 lives lost, 67,000 displaced, 1,500 injured & 864 days of violence. You made 46 foreign trips since, but not a single visit to share the pain of Manipur. Mallikarjun Kharge, cong president

“As many as 864 days of violence, nearly 300 lives lost, 67,000 displaced and 1,500 injured. You made 46 foreign trips since, but not a single visit to share the pain of Manipur. Your last visit to Manipur was in January 2022—for elections!

Your ‘double engine’ has bulldozed the innocent lives of Manipur,” Kharge said.

Wayanad MP and Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said the visit should have happened much earlier. “I am glad that he has decided that it’s worth visiting Manipur after two years of violence,” she told reporters in Wayanad.

Calling the delay “very unfortunate”, she said, “He has allowed what is happening there to happen for so long, so many people to get killed and so many people to go through so much strife.”