Manipur’s 10 Kuki-Zomi-Hmar MLAs on Tuesday (December 10, 2024) organised a silent sit-in protest in New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, where they demanded expediting the dialogue for a separate administration and sought funds from the Central government for development projects. They submitted a memorandum to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Several legislators told The Hindu that even though discussions with the Central government have been going on for a while, there has been no response on the demands. Some called for the negotiations to be escalated to a higher level. “At the level of officials, there is no one to take decisions. We need people who can take decisions at the negotiating table,” one of them said.
Another legislator said negotiations had been stuck on alleged violations of ground rules by some of the 24 Kuki-Zo insurgent groups under the Suspension of Operations pact. This is being done “as a pretext” to delay discussions on the demand for a separate administration, the MLAs said in their memorandum to the Prime Minister.
“The SoO agreement was aimed at resolving political issues and usher in peace and it is against the very sprit of the agreement if the government is hesitant to extend the SoO with select armed groups within the SoO framework,” the memorandum said.
The pact, signed in 2008, has been periodically extended through the years until February 29 this year, when the Manipur government failed to send a representative to sign the tripartite agreement, which threw its fate in a limbo. The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has initiated a review of the ground rules of the pact since and talks are being led by the MHA’s A.K. Mishra, Adviser (Northeast).
Seven of the 10 MLAs, four of whom are with the Bharatiya Janata Party, attended the protest, including Thanlon MLA Vungzagin Valte, who was brutally assaulted by a mob in Imphal and critically injured in the first few days of the conflict that broke out in May 2023.
In a statement issued to the media, the MLAs said, “We are symbolically wearing gags (masks) to portray our voice and therefore the voice of our people have been muted. We will not give any media bytes, because we’ve been lent a deaf ear for the past 19 months by the GoI.” One of the legislators from the BJP said that this was “in a way” a protest against the Centre.
The MLAs said in the memorandum that the State government continued to discriminate against people by depriving them of funds for development projects. The legislators alleged that “radicalised valley-based organisations” were preventing the supply of essential items to Kuki-Zo hill districts “with full knowledge of the State government”, in addition to continued attacks on settlements of their people.
“The Central government must arrange alternative mechanisms for direct financing of development projects for our people under all ministries as the present Government of Manipur has frozen all fund flows to our people since the beginning of the state endorsed ethnic cleansing pogrom and resultant demographic separation in Manipur,” their statement, issued by MLA Chinlunthang, said.
Source: The Hindu
