State of Siege

The resignation of Manipur Chief Minister Biren Singh marks the end of a fraught tenure, but does it signal the beginning of peace?

Manipur

Few departures in Indian politics have been as prolonged and as inevitable as that of N. Biren Singh. For twenty-one months, the Chief Minister of Manipur clung to power through ethnic strife, electoral setbacks, and an increasingly restless party. His resignation on Sunday was less an act of will than the culmination of a political tide that had long turned against him.

The Kuki-Zo community had blamed Singh for the ethnic violence that erupted in May 2023, and their representatives, including seven BJP legislators, had spent months calling for his ouster. In the Meitei-majority Imphal Valley, where Singh should have enjoyed safer ground, his support had eroded. His handling of the state’s crisis had been chaotic at best and complicit at worst. By February 2024, even BJP loyalists in Manipur had lost patience.

The final push came from within. The party’s dissidents, frustrated by months of inertia from the central leadership, were ready to back a no-confidence motion in the state assembly. The BJP high command, which had so far shielded Singh, could no longer ignore the arithmetic. His exit became a matter of damage control.

It was not the first time the Chief Minister had faced insurrection. Through much of 2023, the rumblings against Singh grew louder. Opposition leaders called for his resignation, but more critically, his own party colleagues - both from the Kuki-Zo community and the Meitei-dominated Valley - began knocking on the doors of the Prime Minister’s Office, demanding a leadership change. Each time, the BJP’s central command had stood by Singh, wary of destabilizing a state already on edge.

But patience had limits. The fissures within the Manipur BJP widened to the point where MLAs had begun camping separately, wary of each other’s moves. Singh’s own Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Minister, Yumnam Khemchand Singh, made the party leadership an ultimatum: replace the CM or watch the government collapse.

The realpolitik behind the decision to finally let Singh go is instructive. The BJP leadership was desperate to prevent a legislative crisis in the state assembly. A no-confidence motion would not just be an embarrassment; it would shatter the BJP’s carefully managed image of authority in the Northeast. Moreover, the Supreme Court’s scrutiny of leaked audio tapes, allegedly linking Singh to the ethnic violence, raised fresh concerns. If a judicial inquiry further implicated the outgoing CM, it would be a disaster for the party.

Singh’s resignation is an indictment of the way the Manipur crisis has been handled. Since May 2023, over 200 people have been killed in the ethnic conflict between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo communities. The BJP-led Centre, despite its majoritarian instincts, had propped up Singh while the state burned. Even as armed groups clashed, as villages were torched, and as tens of thousands were displaced, Singh’s government seemed more focused on political survival than on governance.

The consequences of this failure were visible in last year’s Lok Sabha elections. The BJP-led NDA, which had previously dominated the state, lost both seats to the Congress. The people of Manipur sent a clear message, one that the party could not ignore forever.

Then, in November, an incident laid bare the total collapse of public trust in Singh’s government. After the abduction and murder of six Meitei women and children, enraged mobs stormed the homes of multiple MLAs and ministers, including that of the Chief Minister himself. The National People’s Party (NPP), an NDA ally, quickly withdrew its support.

Singh’s resignation is unlikely to bring immediate relief. His departure, after all, does not resolve the fundamental issue of ethnic fissures that is at the heart of Manipur’s crisis. The BJP will name a new leader, but will that person be able to bridge the chasm between the Meiteis and the Kuki-Zo?