Failing to read and control situation : Changing narratives
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: April 25, 2025 -

Delhi has to admit it has failed and accordingly take up the needed steps to put Manipur on the track of normalcy.

Violence erupted in the evening of May 3, 2023. Union Home Minister Amit Shah arrived here on May 29, 2023 and left for Delhi on June 1, 2023.

Thousands of troops were rushed in to contain the situation but nothing was done to clear the highways that connect Manipur to the rest of the country.

So from the evening of May 3, 2023, no Meitei has been able to take the land route to go either to Senapati or Dimapur or Guwahati or Shillong.

Nothing, absolutely nothing was done to clear the highway and on the contrary members of the Committee on Tribal Unity (CoTU) and their affiliates or any Kuki organisation took it upon themselves to play policemen, judge and executioner on the highway.

The free movement fiasco of March 8, 2025 was a direct result of the free hand given to the elements to do as they please on the highway.

This much Delhi must acknowledge and it is with a reason why Manipur has been pointing an accusing finger at Delhi and its men in uniform of treating armed Kuki militants with kid’s gloves.

The status of the SoO pact has been kept under a cloud of uncertainty after its term expired on February 29, 2024.

Top this off with the changing narratives adopted by Delhi ever since the onset of violence and it is more than obvious that no sincere thought has been given to resolve the issue.

It was from the very start of the violence that the Centre pointed at the ruling of the High Court of Manipur which asked the State Government to send the ethnographic and socio-economic report of the Meiteis to see if the community fits the bill to be included in the list of Scheduled Tribes of the Constitution.

The ruling of the High Court was in line with the report sought by the Union Tribal Affairs Ministry back in 2013.

The Union Home Minister could not have been blind to the fact that it is not the job of the judiciary to decide which community fits the bill to be included in the ST list or not.

The next narrative however took a different turn and the finger was pointed at the large, unchecked infiltration from across the border and it was in line with this that Delhi announced that the Indo-Myanmar border would be fenced and the Free Movement Regime would come under certain conditions.

The changing narratives has certainly not helped one bit in resolving the issue and so far the Centre has been quiet on the growing demand to enforce the National Register of Citizens in Manipur so as to weed out all infiltrators, a point which has been agreed upon by no one less than a certain Paolienlal Haokip in an article written back in 2002.

The bottomline is, Delhi needs to be constant in its stand to at least send out the message that it is eager to resolve the issue which is fast approaching the two year mark.

For starters, Delhi should start with questioning why the violence erupted at Churachandpur and quickly spread to the Kuki dominated places of Kangpokpi and Moreh ?

If the Kuki-Chin community had any grievances against the policy and programme of the BJP led State Government then why was a community targeted, first at Churachandpur and then at Torbung, on May 3, 2023 ?

Why hasn’t Delhi delved into this fundamental question ?

Or is this poser too delicate in view of the compulsion of geo-politics ?

If the answer is in the affirmative, and which is highly likely given the way the issue has been handled from Day 1, then where does Manipur stand in Delhi’s overall scheme of things ?

These are questions which the prevailing reality has compelled people to raise.

The Sangai Express is one of the few entities or establishments which initially believed that the ‘silence’ of Prime Minister Narendra Modi could mean so many crucial political points but as the initial period of the clash turned into days, then months, one year and is now fast approaching the two year mark, that ‘silence‘ could today be taken as being synonymous with indifference.

Has President’s Rule done anything better than the earlier Government ?

The answer is out there for all to see.