By IANS
Aizawl : Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari arrived here on a two-day visit to Mizoram amid protests over a 40-year-old bombardment of insurgent bases in the state by the Indian Air Force.
Mizoram is the only territory in independent India to have been strafed by IAF warplanes. The IAF’s 1966 action was controversial at the time but was thought to have been forgiven and forgotten, as Mizo leaders and New Delhi successfully negotiated a peaceful end to the state’s decades-old insurgency.
However, members of the Mizo Zirlai Pawl (MZP), an influential students’ group, put up posters all over state capital Aizawl to coincide with the vice president’s visit and carried placards seeking an apology from New Delhi over the alleged killing of a number of civilians during the bombardment aimed at destroying bases of the Mizo National Front (MNF).
The MNF, then a rebel group, was waging a violent insurgency in Mizoram seeking an independent homeland.
But MNF rebels surrendered en masse in 1986 following the signing of the historic Mizo Accord with the Indian government. The two sides were led by former MNF leader and current Chief Minister Zoramthanga and the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi respectively.
“The vice president saw our placards and he then asked his security personnel to collect some of them,” said MZP president Lalhmachhuana.
“We have already sent an ultimatum to the prime minister and to the president of India over the issue. We want no compensation, what we want is an apology.”
Ansari and his wife Salma Ansari, daughter Nuriya, and a family member Rashid Ansari, were earlier received at the airport by state Governor Lt. Gen (Retd) M.M. Lakhera.
On Friday night, Ansari met representatives from the Mizoram Committee for Democracy in Burma who submitted a petition seeking India’s active involvement in restoring democracy in the neighbouring country.