Kuki-Zo MLAs, civil society groups urge Centre to hold talks with Kuki militant outfits

Guwahati/Imphal, May 17 (IANS) In a significant development, some MLAs and leaders of the Kuki-Zo communities in Manipur held a crucial meeting in Guwahati on Friday and demanded the Central government to resume talks with the Kuki militant outfits with whom the government earlier signed Suspension of Operation (SoO) accord, sources said.

A statement issued after the Guwahati meeting said: "The joint meeting of the MLAs, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and SoO groups today (Friday) at Guwahati resolved that until the resumption of substantive political dialogue by the Indian government with SoO groups, the CSOs and elected representatives shall no longer engage with the Indian government or its representatives."

United Peoples' Front (UPF) and Kuki National Organisation (KNO), which are conglomerates of 23 underground outfits, signed a SoO with the Central government on August 22, 2008, and then there are 2,266 Kuki cadres who have been staying in different designated camps in Manipur.

Congress was in power in Manipur when the SoO was signed.

A tribal leader said that in the Guwahati meeting the prominent MLAs and community leaders analysed the situation in Manipur.

"The Kuki-Zo communities' demand for a separate administrations or formation of Union Territories comprising tribal-inhabited areas is still our core issue," a tribal leader told IANS, requesting annonymity.

The tribal leader, however, refused to disclose the other decisions of the meeting.

After the imposition of President's Rule in violence-strife Manipur, situations both in Meitei-dominated valley region and tribal-inhabited hilly districts are returning to normalcy.

No major ethnic incident was reported from anywhere in the state during the past three months of President's Rule, which was imposed by the Centre on February 13, four days after N. Biren Singh's resignation from the Chief Minister's post.

The 60-member Manipur Assembly, which after the promulgation of President's Rule has been put under suspended animation, has a tenure till 2027.

Till March 6, around 1,000 looted and illegally held weapons, including many sophisticated arms, and a huge cache of ammunition, have been returned to the security forces since Governor Ajay Kumar Bhalla made the appeal for the first time on February 20.

The first initiative to recover the looted and illegally held arms began on May 31, 2023, when former Chief Minister Biren Singh made an appeal to all concerned to surrender the firearms looted from security forces and police armouries.

Officials said that before Biren Singh's resignation as Chief Minister on February 9, a total of 3,422 firearms had been voluntarily surrendered to the authorities and police stations in different districts.

Various official reports, political parties claimed that during the ethnic riots, which broke out in Manipur on May 3, 2023, more than 6,020 varied types of sophisticated arms and lakhs of different types of ammunition were looted from the police stations and police outposts by the mobs, attackers and militants.

Meiteis account for about 53 per cent of Manipur's population and live mostly in the Imphal Valley.

Tribals – Nagas, Kuki-Zo-Hmar -- constitute more than 40 per cent and reside in the hill districts.

More than 260 people have been killed and thousands rendered homeless in ethnic violence between Imphal Valley-based Meiteis and hills-based Kuki-Zo groups since May 2023.

--IANS

sc/khz