Wasbir Hussain | Blistering strife, instability led to Manipur Prez Rule

On Thursday, February 13, the Centre brought strife-torn Manipur under President’s Rule, barely four days after chief minister N. Biren Singh, who led a BJP government in the state, resigned. This decisive action by New Delhi came 21 months after the majority Meiteis and minority Kuki tribes-people got locked in a bitter ethnic war — from May 3, 2023, to be precise. The presence on the ground of thousands of police, paramilitary and Army troops in the state of four million people could not prevent over 250 deaths on both sides and at least 60,000 displaced and rendered homeless.

The Centre gave Mr Biren Singh a long rope but his government, which had a tenure till 2027, clearly failed to restore peace and normality that ultimately forced the Narendra Modi government to dismiss its own party-led government in Manipur. A party in power at the Centre dismissing its own government in a state is rare but not without precedent. That’s a different story, but this is for the 11th time that Manipur is under President’s Rule, the first being for 66 days in 1967, and the longest for two years and 157 days between 1969 and 1972.

Mr Biren Singh resigned on February 9 within 90 minutes of landing in capital Imphal after meeting home minister Amit Shah in New Delhi. Governor Ajay Kumar Bhalla accepted the resignation but asked Mr Singh to continue as caretaker CM. The BJP leadership’s plan was to arrive at a consensus among the party MLAs to choose a new leader to fill in Biren Singh’s position. Towards that end, the party’s Northeast in-charge Sambit Patra reached Imphal the day Biren Singh resigned. Mr Patra was engaged in one-on-one meetings with BJP MLAs and also met Mr Biren Singh. But after a week of parleys, Mr Patra left Imphal on February 16, a full eight days later, without succeeding in his mission, at least on the surface.

The apparent failure of the BJP Legislature Party in Manipur to arrive at a consensus on a new leader indicates the party is faction-ridden with MLAs loyal to Biren Singh and those opposed to him. But since the Assembly has been kept in suspended animation, not dissolved, there would be attempts to sort out the differences and zero in on a new leader as CM. Even before the ethnic violence started in May 2023, BJP legislators belonging to the anti-Biren camp were waiting in the wings to try and replace him but had failed to succeed.

In his exit, Biren Singh, accused by the Kukis as being a CM for Meiteis, played to Meitei sentiments, which is understandable. In his resignation letter addressed to the governor, Biren Singh listed five points which he urged the Centre to implement in the state: (1) to maintain the territorial integrity of Manipur that has a history spanning thousands of years; (2) crack down on border infiltration and formulate a policy to deport illegal migrants; (3) to continue with the fight against drugs and narco-terror; (4) to continue with the foolproof and revised mechanism on the Free Movement Regime between India and Myanmar with biometric listing being strictly enforced; and (5) border fencing with Myanmar.

Clearly, Mr Biren Singh wanted to stand his ground because during the violence, he has been maintaining that the fight was not between Meiteis and Kukis as communities and that it was “narco-terrorists” who had infiltrated from Myanmar into the Kuki areas in Manipur and engaged in the killings and unrest. By urging the Centre to maintain Manipur’s territorial integrity, Biren Singh sought to oppose the demand by the Kuki political and civil society groups across the board for a “separate administration”, outside Manipur’s administrative control. These demands raised by Biren Singh in his letter of resignation was seen as an attempt by the veteran politician to stay politically relevant in the state.

Mr Biren Singh was pushed to the wall after the Supreme Court sought a forensic analysis of a controversial audio clip to ascertain whether it was indeed his. In the audio clip that had gone viral, the voice of a man was heard telling people around him that despite the home minister asking him not to use bombs in the hills, he asked the police to use them. The general allegation by many, including a petitioner in court, which was a Kuki group, was that the voice was of Biren Singh. Many now feel that the court taking cognizance of the charges, which are indeed serious, could be one reason why Biren Singh had to quit finally after weathering the storm in Manipur for 21 long months.

Now that Manipur is under President’s Rule, the big question is whether Mr Bhalla, who was Union home secretary till August 2024, would manage to restore a semblance of order in the state where people from the Imphal Valley had not been to the Kuki-dominated hill districts and vice versa ever since the violence started. Even the ten Kuki-Zo MLAs had not visited Imphal for the past 21 months for fear of their lives. The distrust is total and without the two sides sitting face to face to resolve the differences, it is unlikely that even President’s Rule is going to change things.

Now, Kuki groups like the ITLF or the Indigenous Tribal Leaders’ Forum have welcomed President’s Rule but want a negotiated political settlement to their demand for a separate administration. Militant groupings like the Kuki National Organisation, or KNO, are pushing for elevation of the Kuki-dominated hill districts to a Union territory. The Meiteis are bent on not allowing the dismemberment of Manipur, and here lies the catch. In the meantime, the ten Kuki-Zo MLAs in the Manipur Assembly have demanded a “comprehensive political roadmap” and “time-bound measures to end the sufferings of the internally displaced people” who are living in makeshift relief camps.

In course of the week that Manipur has been under President’s Rule, a few militant cadres have been arrested by the security forces, and there have been no fresh incidents of noticeable violence. The insurgent groups are reported to have directed their cadres to lie low. But if the situation in Manipur has to come to normal and if the distrust between the Meiteis and the Kukis have to reduce, the only way is through a dialogue. As of now, this is going to be governor Bhalla’s biggest challenge. As a bureaucrat, Mr Bhalla has had an illustrious career, and now as the administrator of Manipur, his statecraft will be put to test.

Wasbir Hussain, author and political commentator, is editor-in-chief of Northeast Live, Northeast India’s only satellite English and Hindi news channel. The views expressed here are personal.