Imphal: Union Minister of State for External Affairs and Education Rajkumar Ranjan Singh has said that there is no question of denying a ticket to him, instead he didn’t seek a ticket for the Inner Manipur Parliamentary constituency for the 18th Lok Sabha election.
“I am a member of ‘Modi ka Parivar’. Moreover, the BJP is a family. Whatever the head of the family decides one has to accept it,” Dr Ranjan told The North East Affairs when asked why he wasn’t given the ticket for the upcoming election.
He further elaborated that the seat of a Member of Parliament (MP) is not his property. It’s a process, one day or another he might retire from politics. However, so far, as a representative of the people he has always maintained the interest of the people of Manipur and is always precautious about the image of Manipur while representing Manipur at the national level and to the international level, Dr Ranjan added.
Refuting the media reports that he was one of the worst performers in the Parliament, the MP from Manipur said that before he became a Union Minister he was one of the best parliamentarians as per assessment by some groups and further warned that had the Parliament not been closed now he could have booked those ‘journalists’, who tried to tarnish his image by moving a ‘privilege motion’ in the Lok Sabha.
Even some academicians from his state raised the same question about his performance. Perhaps, they did not know that there is a protocol and procedures. If you are a member of the Council of Ministers you cannot express everything whatever you have in your mind in the parliament, he maintained.
Ranjan also informed that in his first two-year tenure as an MP, he raised over 25 questions in the parliament including boundary issues. Even the so-called ‘Idea of Manipur’ was created some 20 years back by them, he added, claiming that not many MPs and even the candidates for the current election from the state have ever spoken like him in this short period as a Member of Parliament before he became a Union Minister.
The ‘idea of Manipur’, he said, is about sharing and contribution by all the 34 communities for a united Manipur. This civilization is not built by a single community. Even the language we speak is a composition of all 34 dialects we speak in the state. Any people, or community, who disregard, disrespect and dishonour ‘the idea of Manipur’ are the real enemy of Manipur society, the former academician said.
