Aizawl (02.06.2022): The long-pending demand for changing the chief secretary of Mizoram Renu Sharma (IAS: 1988: AUGMUT) resurfaced when Mizoram’s NGO Coordination Committee, a conglomerate of five influential civil society groups, is pushing the Centre to replace her with a Mizo-speaking IAS officer citing a “language barrier” in administration.

The committee had called for a protest in front of the chief secretary’s office in Aizawl on Tuesday. Since Sharma was out of town, the demonstration was postponed. Sharma was appointed as the chief secretary by the Centre on October 28 last year after her predecessor, a Mizo bureaucrat, Lalnunmawia Chuaungo, had retired.

The Central Young Mizo Association, which heads the NGO Coordination Committee, had reasoned that while they did not have a “personal problem” with Sharma, the chief secretary’s inability to communicate in Mizo was a hurdle in administration. It said that it had resorted to protest because multiple requests to the Centre demanding a change had fallen on deaf ears. The NGO Coordination Committee had written to the Vice President, Prime Minister, and the Union Home Minister last year.