Manipur Chief Minister N. Biren left Imphal on Thursday evening after being summoned by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president J.P. Nadda. He was accompanied by the Manipur Works Minister T. Bishwajit and BJP State president A. Sharda. Mr. Biren said that the team had been called to chalk out a strategy for the forthcoming March 2022 Assembly polls in the State. He also said that he would meet Home Minister Amit Shah and urge him to instruct the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to take up the case of the kidnap and murder of social worker Athuan Abomei in Tamenglong district on September 22.
Changes are anticipated in the State’s politics in the run-up to the Assembly polls. BJP sources said that some Congress MLAs and former legislators are likely to join the party. Prominent Congress leaders denied this as speculation.
Nine tribal MLAs, who are members of the Hill Areas Committee, have been camping in Delhi with their complaint against the non-tabling of the Autonomous District Council (Amendment) Bill, 2021 in the monsoon session of the Assembly. Some other BJP MLAs are also in Delhi to air their grievances.
Meanwhile, Pradyut Bordoloi, MP and the All India Congress Committee’s observer for Manipur, before leaving Imphal on Thursday, said that the Congress would win the majority in the 2022 elections. The BJP-led government has been a non-performing one, he said. Although drug traffickers were rounded-up, they were all released on bail, “showing that the government has been promoting the drug business”, Mr. Bordoloi alleged. Recent drug seizures in Assam had established that drug consignments had been routed via Manipur. For these and other well-known reasons, the BJP would not come back to power and the Congress would stage a comeback, he said.
