New Delhi: Manipur chief minister N. Biren Singh and four of his cabinet ministers met with Union home minister Amit Shah on the evening of Sunday, May 14, days after violent ethnic clashes led to over 60 deaths and displaced people in the thousands in the state.
Indian Express reported that those who accompanied Biren were state ministers Govindas Konthoujam, Th. Biswajit Singh, Yumnam Khemchand Singh and Basanta Kumar, along with Manipur BJP chief A Sharda Devi and Rajya Sabha MP Sanajaoba Leishemba, the titular king of Manipur.
The paper’s sources told it that the Bharatiya Janata Party had called Biren to Delhi.
Several first person accounts, including some run on The Wire, have directly blamed Biren and his administration for fomenting the violence since May 3. The Indian Express source reportedly said that the “central leadership” is also allegedly unhappy with the way Biren handled the situation, but wasn’t in favour of a change of guard.
Two days ago, 10 MLAs of the Manipur assembly belonging to the state’s Kuki-Zomi community, including two ministers of Biren’s government, issued a press statement urging the Union government to carve out a “separate administration” under the Indian constitution and let people from their community “live peacefully as neighbours with the state of Manipur”.
The violence reported started over the Kuki-Zomi community’s opposition to the majority Meitei community inching closer to being awarded Scheduled Tribe status.
Members of the Meitei community, meanwhile, have extended their support to Biren.
A day ago, some members of the Meitei community gathered in large numbers at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar to demand that the National Register of Citizens (NRC) be implemented, so as to identify illegal immigrants and deport them.
#Meitei people held a peaceful sit-in protest at Jantar Mantar, Delhi today demanding implementation of NRC in #Manipur pic.twitter.com/xpbW6K753K
— Reagan Moirangthem ꯔꯤꯒꯥꯟ ꯃꯣꯏꯔꯥꯡꯊꯦꯝ 🇮🇳 (@reagan_moirangt) May 14, 2023
Meanwhile, a forum of Catholic members has also written an open letter to the president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India on the alleged acts of violence against Christians and Christian institutions in Manipur, during the recent ethnic violence in the state, and the church’s muted response to it.