Last Sunday, Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh flew down to Delhi in a chartered aircraft to meet Union Home Minister Amit Shah. The meeting triggered intense speculation in Manipur with everyone seemingly asking the same question: was the Centre finally pulling the plug on Biren Singh’s chief ministership?
The meeting, after all, was held against a backdrop of an increasingly loud and widespread clamour for Biren Singh’s removal following ethnic clashes between the Meitei and Kuki communities that have paralysed Manipur since May 3. The clashes, which have since spiralled into a civil war, have claimed over a hundred lives.
Complaints galore
Only the previous day, an all-party meeting had been held to discuss the situation in the state. The Opposition spoke in a unanimous voice demanding that Biren Singh be sacked.
Before that, on June 17, nine of his colleagues from the Bharatiya Janata Party’s state unit – all of them from the Meitei community, as Biren Singh – had gone to the extent of submitting a memorandum to Prime Minister Narendra Modi asking for him to be replaced. The legislators had claimed that the people of the state “have lost complete faith” in the Biren Singh government.
All of this was in addition to…
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