Locals Backing Armed Groups Keeps Manipur On Boil. What's More To Debbarma's 'Peaceful Movement' Call For Tripura Tribals?

Four months on, peace keeps evading Manipur. Curfew was clamped in the Imphal Valley on Thursday after demands for the release of five armed youths arrested by the police turned violent as shutdowns failed to yield results. Violence erupted when members of the Meira Paibis, the Meitei women's vigilante group, tried to storm the police stations, compelling the personnel to fire tear gas shells to contain the situation.

The northeastern state is still awaiting normalcy even after more than four months of ethnic violence that left over 160 people dead and another 50,000 displaced. The ground situation remains tense with armed groups belonging to both communities moving freely in both the valley and the hills. This is a very serious concern and a big challenge for the security establishment trying to restore peace. What further complicates matters is that these armed groups are backed by their respective communities.

Last week, five armed youths, including one suspected to be a member of a banned insurgent group, were arrested by the state police and the Meira Paibis started protesting demanding their immediate release, claiming that the youths were “village defence volunteers”. Notably, these armed youths were caught carrying sophisticated arms and wearing camouflage uniforms.

Armed groups, whether they are Meiteis or Kuki-Zomis, need to be checked by the security forces, and any kind of protest to prevent the forces from executing their duties should be seen as an act against the restoration of normalcy in the strife-torn state. 

The role of Meira Paibis can't be supported. Such actions are only going to keep the pot boiling in the state. And with the locals supporting the armed groups, who are also part of the ongoing violence, it has become very difficult for the security establishment to restore normalcy. The situation demands fresh political initiatives from the ruling dispensation. 

There has been a status quo in the state with the ruling BJP at the Centre, keeping electoral interests in mind, trying not to disturb the current political dispensation, has failed to control the situation.

Taking advantage of this, armed groups, including banned insurgent groups, are gaining strength along with the support of the locals. Although this is an alarming situation, the story of Manipur, unfortunately, has almost disappeared from the mainstream discourse of the country.

Pradyot’s Calls For Peaceful Movement: An Attempt To Arrest Decline Of TIPRA Motha’s Decline?

Meanwhile, Royal scion Pradyot Debbarman, the founder of Tripura’s main Opposition party TIPRA Motha, has again called his supporters for a massive but peaceful protest to secure the constitutional solution of the tribals of the northeastern state. He also said that delimitation is expected to be done next year and claimed that if the constitutional solution for the tribals isn’t achieved before this, then there would be “no future” for the tribals.

It has to be mentioned that the details and methodology of the nationwide delimitation exercise aren’t known yet. These statements of Pradyot came at a time when there were signs of uncertainty among the rank and file of the party as a result of flip-flops taken by the party leadership. (To be fair, party leadership refers to Pradyot himself.) Although it is the main Opposition party, it has been soft towards the ruling BJP. In addition, sometimes the party even tries to be with the CPI(M), the other crucial Opposition party. 

In the recent bypolls, despite promising to support the Opposition Left, the party declared that it wouldn’t support both BJP and CPM in the end. It is because of this ambiguous stand, that the constituent Tipraland State Party had to part its way from Motha last week.

Interestingly, after the TSP parted its ways from Motha, the party formed its central executive committee with six members. In the list, the first name was Pradyot Debbarma, who had resigned from the chairman's post during the party’s plenary session held in July. The list also includes veteran tribal leader and party president BK Hrangkhawl and leader of Opposition Animesh Debbarma. Clearly, the return of Pradyot into the party’s organisational structure shows that there are worries regarding the party's future. 

This call of peaceful protest by Pradyot in the name of securing a constitutional solution for tribals is an attempt to boost the support base of the party but it remains to be seen to what extent this call helps the party in arresting the declining momentum in the hills of the state.

Gains For Opposition SDF Ahead Of State Elections

This week the main opposition Sikkim Democratic Front led by former chief minister Pawan Kumar Chamling got a boost after a multitude of retired state officials and over a thousand voters under the leadership of youth leader Ashish Rai joined the party.

Ashish Rai was earlier a member of the SDF but he quit the party after he was denied the party ticket in the 2019 state assembly elections from the Arithang assembly constituency. He contested the seat as an independent and came second by securing 33.99 per cent votes. The official SDF candidate Shyam Pradhan bagged 19.63 per cent votes while the winning candidate Arun Kumar Upreti of the Sikkim Krantikari Morcha got 40.02 per cent votes. Had Ashish been nominated by the party, SDF would have won the seat. That’s the reason Chamling too accepted that it was a mistake and led to the party's defeat. It has to be mentioned that the SDF narrowly lost to SKM in the 2019 elections with the former getting 15 seats and the latter 17.

Another important leader who is also likely to join the SDF is former footballer Bhaichung Bhutia, who now heads the Hamro Sikkim Party. Bhaichung has said that he is going to merge his party with SDF soon. It has to be mentioned that after the loss of power, SDF got a big setback as it lost 12 of its MLAs to BJP and SKM and was reduced to only one seat in the state assembly — its lone member is the founder-president Pawan Kumar Chamling himself. These memberships are, undoubtedly, going to boost the image of the SDF ahead of the state elections, slated to be held next year along with the Lok Sabha polls.

The author is a political commentator.

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