Aizawl: A civil society group in Mizoram has cancelled its proposed demonstration before the office of state chief secretary Renu Sharma from Tuesday to prevent the official from attending office.
Earlier on Monday, NGO Coordination Committee, the conglomerate of five major civil society organisations and student bodies, including Central Young Mizo Association (CYMA) and state apex student organisation Mizo Zirlai Pawl (MZP) had announced that it would stage a demonstration before the chief secretary’s office from Tuesday to manifest its disappointment over the apathy shown by the Centre towards the appointment of the son of the soil as the chief secretary.
However, the proposed picketing was cancelled or postponed by the coordination committee in the night when it was learned that Sharma was touring Delhi for a few days commencing from Tuesday.
The Coordination Committee chairman and CYMA president R. Lalngheta said that they have cancelled the proposed demonstration after confirming that the chief secretary is visiting Delhi and she will be out of the station for some days.
“Our main motive was to draw the Centre’s attention towards the appointment of a Mizo IAS officer as long as there is an eligible person for the top official post. The Centre has ignored our repeated appeals to appoint a Mizo IAS officer as the state chief secretary,” he said.
Earlier the day, Langheta told reporters that the civil society group had submitted representations several times to the Centre urging it to appoint an indigenous Mizo IAS officer as the state chief secretary to avoid language barriers and ensure administrative efficiency.
Although the NGO coordination committee has no personal hatred towards Sharma, it could not accept the Centre’s decision for appointing a non-Mizo IAS officer while there are eligible Mizo IAS officers for the top post, he had said.
He had said that there used to be certain problems as far as the administration is concerned due to the language barrier when a non-Mizo officer was appointed as the chief secretary.
Lalngheta had also said that they urged the Centre to appoint a Mizo IPS officer to head the state police as Director General of Police (DGP).
He said that a Mizo IPS officer, who is a batch-mate of the state incumbent DGP Devesh Chandra Srivastava, is now posted as BSF IGP in the Central Armed
Police Force frontier headquarters in Rajasthan.
The issue of chief secretary had hit headlines when the Centre had appointed Renu Sharma, an AGMUT cadre IAS officer of the 1988 batch, as the chief secretary of Mizoram in October.
The same day, the Mizoram government also issued a notification directing JC Ramthanga, additional chief secretary of the chief minister, to take charge of the chief secretary until further order.
A day after Sharma’s appointment, Zoramthanga had written to Home Minister Amit Shah urging him to modify the Centre’s order of appointing Renu Sharma as the Chief Secretary of the state and instead appoint a person, who knows the working standard of Mizo language for the chief secretary post.
In the letter, the chief minister pointed out that none of the cabinet ministers understands Hindi and some even have problems understanding English.
“The Mizo people, by and large, do not understand Hindi, and none of my Cabinet Ministers understands Hindi, some of them even have problems with the English language. With such a background, a Chief Secretary without the knowledge of a working standard Mizo language will never be an effective and efficient Chief Secretary,” Zoramthanga had said in the letter.
He further added in the letter that “Due to this fact, the Government of India never posted a Chief Secretary who does not know the working standard of Mizo language since the creation of the state of Mizoram.