A global umbrella body of civil society organisations of Manipur's Meitei community has requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah to scrap an agreement signed with insurgent groups of the Kuki tribes over allegations that they have been involved in the Manipur ethnic violence.
The request by the Meitei Alliance comes amid speculation that a formal announcement on the status of the controversial suspension of operations (SoO) agreement in Manipur is expected to come. However, a meeting in neighbouring Assam's Guwahati on June 5 had no link with the SoO agreement in Manipur.
The Manipur assembly unanimously passed a resolution asking the Centre to scrap the SoO agreement on February 29, 2024, the same day the deadline for extension of the SoO agreement ended.
"These armed groups, which have been the primary instigators and escalators of violence in Manipur since May 3, 2023, have used the SoO as a cover to pursue a vested agenda," the Meitei Alliance said in a statement.
"Since the initiation of the SoO agreement in 2008, these militant groups had exploited the arrangement as a shield for engaging in acts of terror... They committed repeated and blatant violations of the SoO ground rules, amounting to terrorism," the Meitei Alliance alleged.
Some of these violations, the Meitei Alliance said, include extortions and illegal 'highway tax', recruitment of insurgents, and nexus with other insurgent groups in Myanmar and Manipur, among others.
"These armed groups have been the primary instigators and escalators of violence in Manipur since May 3, 2023 and have used the SoO [agreement] as a cover to pursue a vested agenda, that directly or indirectly contributed to infiltration into Indian soil by large-scale illegal immigrants from Myanmar..." the Meitei Alliance said in the strongly worded statement.
The Manipur Police for the first time confirmed in September 2024 the involvement of insurgents who are part of the SoO agreement in the ethnic violence. The police also, for the first time, confirmed the involvement of the Meitei insurgent group UNLF (P), which had signed a ceasefire agreement with the Centre and the state, in the ethnic violence.
Three insurgents of the SoO agreement-signatory Kuki Liberation Army (KLA) and one from the United National Liberation Front (Pambei) were killed in a gunfight in Jiribam district in September 2024, the police had said.
Under the SoO agreement, the insurgents are to stay at designated camps and their weapons kept in locked storage, to be monitored jointly with the authorities.
Over 260 have been killed and nearly 50,000 have been internally displaced in the Manipur violence.
