Mizoram: Civil group cancels planned protest against chief secretary's appointment

Aizawl: A civil society group in Mizoram has cancelled a planned demonstration in front of state chief secretary Renu Sharma's office scheduled for Tuesday in order to prevent the official from reporting to work.

NGO Coordination Committee, a 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 earlier on Monday that it would stage a demonstration in front of the chief secretary's office from Tuesday to express its dissatisfaction with the Centre's apathy towards the appointment of the son of the soil as chief secretary.

The proposed picketing, however, was called off or postponed by the coordination committee late Monday night after it was learned that Sharma would be in Delhi for a few days beginning Tuesday.

After learning that the chief secretary is visiting Delhi and will be out of the station for a few days, the Coordination Committee chairman and CYMA president R. Langheta announced that the planned demonstration has been cancelled.

“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.

Langheta told reporters earlier in the day that the civil society group had written to the Centre several times, urging it to appoint an indigenous Mizo IAS officer as state chief secretary to avoid language barriers and ensure administrative efficiency.

Despite having no personal animosity toward Sharma, the NGO coordination committee could not accept the Centre's decision to appoint a non-Mizo IAS officer to the top post when there are qualified Mizo IAS officers, he had said.

He had previously stated that when a non-Mizo officer was appointed as the chief secretary, there were some issues with the administration due to the language barrier.

They also urged the Centre to appoint a Mizo IPS officer to lead the state police as Director General of Police, according to Lalngheta (DGP).

He claimed that a Mizo IPS officer, who is a batchmate of the state's current DGP Devesh Chandra Srivastava, has been assigned to the Central Armed Forces as a BSF IGP. In Rajasthan, the police force's frontier headquarters are located.

When the Centre appointed Renu Sharma, an AGMUT cadre IAS officer from the 1988 batch, as the chief secretary of Mizoram in October, the issue of chief secretary made headlines.

On the same day, the Mizoram government issued a notification instructing JC Ramthanga, the chief minister's additional chief secretary, to assume command of the chief secretary until further notice.

A day after Sharma's appointment, Zoramthanga wrote to Home Minister Amit Shah, pleading with him to overturn the Centre's decision to appoint Renu Sharma as the state's Chief Secretary and instead appoint someone who is familiar with the Mizo language's working standard.

The chief minister stated in the letter that none of the cabinet ministers speak Hindi and that some have difficulty 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.