Mumbai: Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh’s resignation on Sunday is the BJP’s way to contain the unrest within the state party unit, sources within the Manipur state government and the BJP have said.
A major chunk of the BJP MLAs in Manipur had gone against CM Singh ever since the violence broke out in the state about two years back and the state administration failed to contain it. The MLAs, though not publicly, had been demanding replacement of N Biren Singh for a long time. To add to this the Manipur State Congress state President Keisham Meghachandra Singh threatened with a no confidence motion against the Biren Singh government. He said that the Congress shall move the motion in the assembly session starting Monday.
Though, the Congress didn’t have the requisite numbers in the state assembly to be able to move such a motion, the central BJP leadership sensed a danger of disgruntled party MLAs supporting the opposition in moving the motion. The central party leadership then summoned Biren Singh to Delhi on Saturday evening. He returned to Imphal after a two-hour long meeting with BJP national president J P Nadda and union home minister Amit Shah and tendered his resignation to Governor Ajay Kumar Bhalla on Sunday evening.
Source within the party also said that the decision to make Singh resign might also be linked to the leaked audio tape alleged linking him to the ethnic violence in the state. On Monday, (Feb 3), the Supreme Court had sought a sealed-cover report from the Central Forensic Sciences Laboratory regarding the leaked audio tape and had posted the next hearing in the case to March 24.
However, a private non-profit named Truth Labs Forensic Services had said that said that 93 per cent of the voice in the audio tapes match with the voice of CM N Biren Singh’s public speeches. Hence, the party might have decided to ask Singh to resign in order to avoid further embarrassment, the sources said.
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