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In 2000, Irom Sharmila of Manipur started a hunger strike against AFSPA. Within days, she was picked up by the Manipur Police under Section 309 of the IPC (attempted suicide) and transferred into judicial custody. Because she was in judicial custody, the state took legal responsibility for keeping her alive. To accomplish this, a feeding tube was placed through her nose, and she was fed through it for a year. Because the maximum sentence under Section 309 was one year, the govt was legally forced to release her once every 12 months. Upon release, she would immediately pull out the nasal tube and resume her fast, leading to her re-arrest days later on fresh charges to restart the cycle of force-feeding. This continued for 16 years until she got fed up with the arrest-tube-cycle and voluntarily ended the fast in August 2016. And Manipur still has AFSPA. Sharing this for the govt to understand that you can easily solve a Sonam Wangchuk-like blackmail this way. Just invoke Section 226 of the BNS as soon as someone announces a hunger strike, arrest and insert a nasogastric tube, and feed them until they give up. Yes, Dharmendra Pradhan is an incompetent man and should be fired for his incompetence, but the state should not allow a single individual to subvert the collective will of the electorate through emotional coercion, undermining the rule of law. Yielding to such tactics establishes a dangerous precedent where public policy is dictated by extreme self-harm rather than democratic consensus and the common good. Once Wangchuk gives up and goes back to Ladakh, fire Dharmendra Pradhan.