Aizawl: The year gone by saw Congress
winning crucial polls in Mizoram even as incidents of
xenophobia, stalled Bru repatriation process, border dispute,
gay issues and gun-running marked 2009 in the Christian-
dominated Northeastern state.
Riding on an anti-incumbency wave, Congress wrested 79
per cent of the seats in the village council elections from
opposition Mizo National Front (MNF), besides capturing the
lone Lok Sabha seat during the general elections held on April
16.
The party's nominee C L Ruala defeated former Lok
Sabha MP H Lallungmuana, an independent candidate backed by
MNF-Mizoram People's Conference combine by a margin of
1,05,146 votes.
The Lok Sabha polls, however, witnessed the lowest
turnout in the history of Mizoram at barely 50 per cent.
Nursing wounds of the defeat after a decade-old rule,
MNF chief Zoramthanga refused to attribute Congress' victory
to anti-incumbency but claimed that tampering of EVMs ruined
his prospects and had threatened to boycott the Parliamentary
polls if the EC did not revert to ballot papers.
2009 also witnessed hatred raising its ugly head among
communities in the state, causing not only misunderstanding
but also violence.
Possible xenophobic movement against Chin refugees,
triggered by an impugned report of the Human Rights Watch
(HRW), was averted when the influential Young Mizo Association
(YMA) intervened and convened a meeting of NGOs of Mizos and
Chin groups to avoid communal clash.
Communal outrage between the Mizos and the Brus,
however, could not be prevented.
The murder of a resident of Bungthuam village along
Mizoram-Tripura border on November 13 not only led to communal
confrontation, but also derailed the proposed repatriation of
the Bru refugees from Tripura, set to begin from November 16.
The Centre and the state government have been making
efforts to repatriate thousands of Bru refugees from six
relief camps in north Tripura district since 1997.
The first tripartite meeting after the new Congress
government came to power was held on April 28 and officials
from the Ministry of Home Affairs, who participated in the
meeting visited Bru relief camps in neighbouring Tripura.
Representatives of Bru community, Mizoram government
and the Centre decided that identification of Brus who are
bona fide residents of the state should be taken up soon.
The year also witnessed surrender of 64 members of
Manipur-based Sinlung People's Liberation Army (SPLA) at
Aizawl where the Hmar militants laid down arms.
Border dispute with neighbouring Assam continued and
erupted a number of times, the first and the most serious
being in March when the state government virtually gave the
firing order on the Mizoram-Cachar (Assam) border after a Mizo
farmer and his workers were allegedly assaulted by Assam
forest department officials.
Also the gay issue, triggered by Delhi High Court's
verdict to decriminalise homosexuality, shocked the powerful
church and raged on till the end of the year, prompting the
Synod, the highest decision making body of the Presbyterian
Church of Mizoram to amend its canon on homosexuality to
ensure more stringent church guidelines against gays and
lesbians living together.
The church organised mass prayer on August 15 so that
the centre would not scrap section 377 of the Indian Penal
Code criminalising homosexuality and also submitted a
memorandum to this effect to Union Law Minister Veerapa Moily.
A long spell of drought due to late advent of
pre-monsoon and monsoon caused not only crop failure during
the year, but also forest fires which claimed four lives in
mid-March.
Smoke from jhum fires caused immense pollution,
resulting in perpetual flight cancellations during March.
Another calamity hit the state when hailstorms destroyed
around 200 houses and caused extensive damage to crops even as
the drought condition prevailed in April.
The state government earlier estimated the crop
failure at 59 per cent but the figure dropped to 48 per cent
after heavy monsoon during August.
The state also witnessed an increase in drug
trafficking, especially heroin from across the porous
404-km-long international borer with Myanmar.
Gun-running also continued from Myanmar and
Bangladesh. The state police and paramilitary forces deployed
along the 713-long-Mizoram-Myanmar-Bangladesh border seized
huge cache of arms meant for northeast militants.
In some good news for government employees, comprising
around five per cent of the total population, the state
government decided to implement the Sixth Pay Commission.
-PTI
First Published: Tuesday, December 22, 2009, 16:42