New Delhi: The National People’s Party’s (NPP) decision to pull out of the N. Biren Singh government has come in the backdrop of the fresh violence in Manipur, but a large section of the party had been pushing its president to bite the bullet for more than a year now.
Announcing the NPP’s exit to BJP national president J.P. Nadda Sunday, NPP president Conrad Sangma underlined that the government “under the leadership of Shri Biren Singh has completely failed to resolve the crisis and restore normalcy” in Manipur.
The Manipur conflict has been raging on for over one-and-a-half years now.
Sources told ThePrint that Conrad Sangma, who is the chief minister of Meghalaya, has been mulling the decision but putting it off due to an internal rift over the NPP’s Bharatiya Janata Party association. Five of seven MLAs in the NPP’s Manipur unit till recently wanted to remain in the BJP-led ruling alliance.
However, a section of the party has been insisting on snapping ties with the BJP, especially since the NPP lost ground in its home turf of Meghalaya in the Lok Sabha elections, with its plans to emerge as a key political player in the Northeast appearing further out of reach.
National People’s Party vice-president Yumnam Joykumar Singh, who served as the Manipur deputy CM in the first Biren Singh Cabinet from 2017 to 2022, has been among the NPP voices severely critical of the handling of the Manipur situation.
Speaking to ThePrint Monday, he said that the “BJP leadership never cared to listen to the NPP” on the possible ways to resolve the conflict, which has claimed over 250 lives and displaced thousands.
“Biren Singh did not even invite the NPP to the first all-party meeting, convened after the conflict broke out in May 2023. We were not invited despite being a part of the ruling alliance. The government, with time, came to be seen as a pro-Meitei government. It was no longer a government for all,” Joykumar, also the director general of police in Manipur between 2007-2012, said.
The National People’s Party holds seven seats in the 60-member assembly in Manipur.
Despite the NPP’s exit, the BJP retains its majority in Manipur, with 37 legislators and additional support from Naga People’s Front (NPF) and Janata Dal (United). The Kuki People’s Alliance (KPA) had withdrawn its support earlier this year, citing concerns similar to the NPP’s over the ongoing violence in the state.
In Meghalaya, the NPP, with 31 MLAs, is the leading partner in the ruling alliance, which includes two BJP MLAs. In Nagaland, the NPP, with five MLAs, remains in the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP)-led ruling alliance. Five NPP MLAs are also part of the BJP-led ruling alliance in Arunachal Pradesh.
LS polls a jolt, but decision took time
In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the NPP got a jolt, with the party losing the two seats it contested from Meghalaya—one to the Congress, and the other to the Voice of the People Party (VPP). In Nagaland, the NDPP lost to the Congress, which also picked up the two Lok Sabha seats in Manipur.
The results vindicated what NPP leaders such as Joykumar had been urging Conrad Sangma to do—snap ties with the BJP.
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s statement that the BJP suffered in the LS polls due to a “particular community” in what was an apparent reference to Christians added to the resentment within the NPP against the BJP.
However, as five of the seven NPP MLAs in Manipur favoured staying on in the Biren Singh government, Sangma dilly-dallied.
This, despite Sangma himself saying, in an interview with ThePrint in July, that the NPP’s “alignment” with certain political parties and anti-incumbency could have been the factors behind its defeat in the LS polls. At the time, he also ruled out the possibility of any future pre-poll tie-up between the NPP and the BJP.
On 27 September, Sangma met NPP MLAs and office-bearers in Guwahati to gather their views on the party’s ties with the BJP. After two days, five NPP MLAs of Manipur wrote to Sangma, complaining about Joykumar threatening to walk out of the Biren Singh government “without any consultation with the NPP MLAs”.
Last month, Sangma called a meeting of the NPP’s national executive in New Delhi on 5 October. Two days before the meeting, he deferred it.
Then, on 9 October, in a deepening of the rift, five NPP MLAs from Manipur stayed away from the party’s state executive committee meeting. The remaining two MLAs sent letters expressing their inability to attend the meeting due to medical reasons.
“The MLAs had their reasons for wanting to stay on in the ruling alliance. The reasons are financial—the ruling alliance helps people make money from government contracts. But, once people started targeting the ruling alliance MLAs, they developed cold feet. Conrad Sangma got the opportunity to execute the exit,” a senior NPP leader told The Print.
‘Requested BJP to bring neutral CM face’
Joykumar said the NPP requested the BJP leadership several times to replace Biren Singh with a “neutral” CM face.
“By that, we did not necessarily mean President’s rule. Someone acceptable to all communities should have become the CM. Under Biren Singh, even Manipur Police came to be seen as pro-Meitei,” he said.
Joykumar also slammed the CM, accusing him of being the force behind the “private militia Arambai Tenggol”.
“The looting of police armouries by Arambai should never have been allowed,” he said.
He also said that only the Centre could have prevented the influx of illegal immigrants from Myanmar.
“India has geopolitical considerations for which it supports the pro-democracy forces there (in Myanmar). But it should have been made clear that they (people from Myanmar) can take shelter only if they do not create problems on our side of the border. The Centre has not done anything on that count,” he said.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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