The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: The Kuki People’s Alliance (KPA) – a party with two sitting MLAs in the Manipur government and a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance – on Sunday announced that it is withdrawing support from the N. Biren Singh government.
“After careful consideration of the current conflagration, the continued support for the incumbent government of Manipur, led by Chief Minister N Biren Singh, is no longer fructuous. Accordingly, the support of the KPA to the Government of Manipur is hereby withdrawn and can be considered null and void,” KPA president Tongmang Haokip said in a statement on Sunday evening, The Indian Express reported.
The two KPA MLAs currently in the Manipur assembly are Kimneo Hangshing and Chinlunthang, representing the Saikul and Singat constituencies respectively.
The KPA is a new party – it was formed in 2022 and contested its first elections in the same year. Members of the party had attended the NDA meet held in Delhi in July.
There are eight other Kuki MLAs in the state assembly, all from the BJP. While they have openly criticised the chief minister for his handling of the ongoing ethnic conflict, they continue to be a part of the government. All 10 Kuki MLAs had earlier urged the Union government to carve out a separate administration under the Indian constitution and let people from their community “live peacefully as neighbours with the state of Manipur”.
The Manipur assembly is supposed to convene on August 21. The BJP MLA from Churachandpur, L.M. Khaute, has already said he will be unable to attend the session “in view of the prevailing law and order situation”, PTI reported.
More than three months have passed since ethnic conflict erupted in Manipur on May 3, and the violence is showing no signs of abating. On Saturday, six people were killed in fresh rounds of violence – leading the Union government to send 800 additional central security personnel to the state.
While Kuki groups have consistently held the Biren Singh government responsible for failing to protect their people and even encouraging the violence, Meitei groups too have openly expressed their unhappiness with the chief minister. The Coordinating Committee on Manipur Integrity (COCOMI), an umbrella organisation of Meitei groups which has been supporting the Singh government so far and even urged the chief minister not to resign earlier, has now issued an “indefinite social boycott” appeal against the same government, The Times of India reported.
The resurgence in violence, COCOMI said, is because the state government has not been taking heed of civil society groups’ demand to act against “Chin Kuki narco terrorists”. The group also criticised the government for failing to convene a special assembly session on the crisis.