Imphal/Thoubal district: The Congress has been a near-constant in Manipur. Between 1963 (when it won the state assembly elections for the first time), till the last assembly elections in 2017 (which saw the BJP forming government), the party has been in power for 41 years here — a significant achievement in a state where the political landscape has been marred by insurgency for many years, leading to repeated periods of President’s Rule.
The period of Congress rule in the state includes former Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh’s three-terms in office between 2002 and 2017 — the longest for any CM in Manipur.
Yet today, as the state gears up for the coming assembly elections — to be held in two phases on 28 February and 5 March, with results to be announced on 10 March — many in Manipur are questioning the future of the Congress in the state, crippled as it has been by the loss in the 2017 assembly elections and defection by members.
“Growing up you could only see the khubak (Congress symbol ‘hand’ in Meiteilon, spoken by the dominatant ethnic Meitei group) here. We’ve seen that since the time of our grandmothers and mothers. Now we also see the thambal (lotus),” said a 34-year-old Imphal resident, who didn’t wish to be named.
From 47 MLAs in 2012 (in a House of 60), to 28 in 2017, to being left with just 13 in the past few months, the decline in the khubak‘s fortunes in Manipur has been drastic, and brought on by the political culture in the state as well as problems within the organisation itself, feel experts.
ThePrint tracks the journey of the Congress in Manipur.
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Hold on power
The Congress won the assembly elections for the first time in 1963, when Mairembam Koireng Singh becoming Manipur’s first elected chief minister.
Till 2002, the position of the Manipur CM oscillated between the Congress and a few regional parties, including some breakaway factions of the Congress and Left parties.
Meanwhile, the years from 1960 onwards also saw the rise of insurgent groups like the United National Liberation Front (UNLF), the People’s Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak (PREPAK) and People’s Liberation Army of Manipur (PLA) — separatist groups that believe that the merger of Manipur with the Union of India had been a forced one. Adding to the political mix were the tribal militias — the Naga and Kuki groups — which further aggravated tensions and led to ethnic clashes in the 1990s.
It was in this political backdrop that Okram Ibobi Singh began his political career — first winning the elections from the Khangabok seat as an Independent candidate in 1984, then joining the Congress a year later. Following the 2002 assembly elections, when the Congress emerged as the single largest party in Manipur, Singh was appointed the chief minister for the first time. The party then went on to win the next two elections, and Singh became Manipur’s longest-serving CM — significant in a state where earlier governments had failed to complete terms because of President’s Rule being implemented intermittently owing to the insurgency.
Ibobi’s three terms in office, however, were marred by increasing tensions between the hill and valley areas of Manipur, a factor that has traditionally shaped the state’s political landscape.
Manipur’s hill regions constitute about 90 per cent of the state’s geographical area, though they form a smaller part of the population. Of the 60 assembly seats, the hill areas control only 20.
These areas are primarily home to Naga and Kuki tribes and have historically lagged behind the valley areas, dominated by the Meitei people (the predominant ethnic group in Manipur), on all development indicators. During Ibobi Singh’s time in power, the hill-valley divide erupted specifically over Meitei-led protests demanding the Inner Line Permit (a document issued by the government to allow travel to a protected area) and three contentious bills that were termed as anti-hill.
It was alleged that the bills — the Manipur Land Revenue and Land Reforms (7th Amendment) Bill and the Manipur Shops and Establishments (2nd Amendment) Bill would lead to an encroachment of tribal areas by the people of plains, mostly Meiteis.
Discontentment with the Congress also grew, particularly in the Naga-dominated hill areas like Ukhrul — the birthplace of leaders who have spearheaded the Naga movement — after the Ibobi Singh government refused to allow NSCN (I-M) general secretary Thuingaleng Muivah to enter the state to visit his ancestral village.
But Singh’s tenure wasn’t all bad, say experts.
Political observers in the state remark that among other things his government had managed to do was repeal the Armed Forces Special Powers Act from seven constituencies in and around Imphal in 2004, solving the prevailing problem of blackouts by implementing the use of pre-paid meters, and taking up road-widening projects in Imphal.
Still, Singh’s volatile tenure left a mark on the party’s position in Manipur and the Congress in the 2017 elections won 28 seats, as opposed to the 42 it had won in the 2012 elections. Back then, five MLAs of the breakaway Manipur State Congress Party had also eventually joined the Congress, and the two parties merged, taking the number of Congress MLAs in Manipur to 47.
Meanwhile the BJP, helmed by N. Biren Singh — once a protege of Ibobi Singh, who defected in 2016 — saw its seat count rise from 0 to 21 in 2017.
Eventually, it was the BJP that clinched power in the state, by managing to stitch together a last-minute alliance with the National People’s Party, Naga People’s Front and the Lok Janshakti Party.
“Ibobi’s fall had a lot to do with the BJP’s rise at the Centre (in 2014). There was certain anti-incumbency, still they (the Congress) won 28 seats,” said Pradip Phanjoubam, editor of Imphal Review of Arts and Politics.
However, he further said that electoral politics in Manipur is more a carnival, “won by money, personality and gun culture”.
Also read: Protests, resignations greet BJP’s candidate announcement for Manipur assembly polls
Continuing decline
Congress’s waning hold in the legislative assembly didn’t stop with the 2017 elections, as the political “carnival” continued well after.
Over the ensuing five years, the party’s numbers in the house declined by 15 legislators, who defected to other parties.
One of the biggest blows was the defection of Govindas Kounthoujam, a former Manipur Pradesh Congress Committee president and six-time MLA from Bishnupur assembly constituency, who quit and joined the BJP in August last year.
Bimol Akoijam, an associate professor at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, said the defections weren’t necessarily a sign of Congress’s position in Manipur, but attributable to the larger political culture in the state.
“In small states like Manipur, whoever forms governments at the Centre tends to shape power here. The BJP will also become a weak party if the Congress comes to power at the Centre. The BJP at the national level has a well-fed election machine; it has created some impact on the Congress, that’s obvious,” he said.
The All India Congress Committee in-charge for Manipur, Bhaktacharan Das, blamed the BJP for the defections. “The tendency of the BJP was to spread to different states and they pushed to hunt MLAs at any cost,” he said.
“Unfortunately some of our MLAs went over, but the ones who left were not ideologically blended with the Congress and had no commitment to the party.”
According to NPP leader and Manipur Deputy Chief Minister Yumnam Joykumar Singh, however, the Congress also “suffers from weak central leadership”. The NPP is in coalition with the BJP in the state, as well as in Meghalaya, but the parties are fighting the Manipur elections separately this time.
“They (the Congress) does not allow anyone from the younger generation to grow in the party, except for the Gandhi family. What happened in Madhya Pradesh, what nearly happened in Rajasthan… the same experience has been there in Manipur also,” he said, referring to defections.
Akoijam, however, was of the view that the Congress was still “better off” in Manipur than at the national level, as the 73-year-old Ibobi Singh still has political relevance. “Ibobi’s presence has been very crucial for the party, and has made a difference,” he said.
Politicians and experts more or less align on the fact that in its present circumstances, the Congress is likely to win fewer seats this time than it did in 2017. But, the jury is still out on whether it would stage a comeback in government, given the rocky alliance between the NPP and the BJP, which has only taken a turn for the worse ahead of the coming elections with leaders firing salvos at each other.
The Congress, in fact, had a chance at a second lease of life in 2020, when amid rising tensions between the BJP and its coalition partners, the NPP had threatened to walk out and ally with the Congress.
Joykumar claimed that it was the Congress’s “inability to hold the flock”, a reference to defections by party members, and eventual intervention by the BJP leadership, which made them reconsider.
On the campaign trail
It was a sea of colourful pheis and phaneks (traditional clothes worn by the women) at a Congress rally in Wangkhem constituency, a party bastion in Thoubal district last week. Hundreds had thronged the public meeting being held behind the house of party candidate and sitting MLA Keisham Meghachandra Singh.
Women from different leikais or neighbourhoods made their way there, carrying offerings of rice grain, fruits and vegetables — a royal era ritual known as Athenpot Thunbi, in which food items are given to a candidate as a mark of support.
Meghachandra Singh, dressed in a white dhoti and shirt, sat on a platform, flanked by Ibobi Singh, Bhaktacharan Das, and senior Congress leader Imran Kidwai.
“All the developmental work that they [BJP] talk about was initiated under our regime,” said Ibobi, addressing the crowd. “When we were in power, there was no communalism, but once the BJP came, this has started like it did in Tripura,” he added, referring to incidents that took place last year in Manipur’s fellow Northeastern state.
The Congress, this time, has focused its campaign on “retelling” Manipur’s development story while “calling out the” BJP for “assaulting the culture, history and tradition of Manipur”.
“I believe that every single state has an equal right to have their own languages, culture, history and a way of looking at themselves. The BJP believes in one ideology, one language and one culture. India is facing a battle between these two ideologies,” said Rahul Gandhi in his only visit to the state before this election, earlier this week.
Compared to the BJP’s campaign, which saw Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Home Minister Amit Shah and Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma rallying for the party in Manipur, the Congress’s campaign seemed lacklustre.
Ibobi, in an interview to ThePrint claimed that this mattered little in terms of garnering support. “I told you they [BJP] are really scared. During the Congress regime, at the most, we had one visit by then-PM Manmohan Singh. But look at how many BJP union ministers have visited this time,” he said.
Voices on the ground remain divided.
Y. Omitha, a weaver in the Keirao constituency in Imphal East, said, “The BJP government inflated prices. Under the Congress the prices were low…We are all weavers, we don’t get any money under the BJP.”
But a few kilometers away, in the adjoining constituency of Kshetrigaon, 47-year-old Aongou, a tea shop owner said, “The hill-valley divide has been bridged under the BJP government, there used to be a lot of disparities earlier.”
The thought on most people’s minds is voiced by Phanjoubam, who said, “Definitely this (the Congress) is a party in decline in the state, and this election will be very crucial for them.”
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
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