The members of ‘Arambai Tengol‘- a Meitei organisation- surrendered their arms Thursday days after meeting with Manipur Governor Ajay Kumar Bhalla.
The meeting between Arambai Tenggol and Bhalla took place on Tuesday, February 25, in restoring peace and normalcy to the strife-torn region.
Discussions also included the potential surrender of weapons by the group under specific terms and conditions, officials said.
Following the meeting, Arambai Tenggol’s public relations officer Robin Mangang disclosed that the governor had requested the group to lay down their arms.
Mangang reportedly said that Arambai Tenggol had set some terms and conditions to the governor, and once those are fulfilled, they will surrender the weapons.
The meeting has sparked controversy and drawn sharp criticism from Kuki organisations, which see the engagement as an affront to their ongoing struggles for justice and safety amid ongoing ethnic tensions in Manipur.
Manipur has experienced unrest since February when the BJP-led administration initiated an eviction campaign that appeared to single out a particular tribal community. Whilst this action sparked demonstrations, they were not as extensive as those that erupted on May 3, following the Manipur High Court’s instruction to the state to act upon a decade-old proposal recommending Scheduled Tribe (ST) classification for the non-tribal Meitei population.
And most recently, on September 7 a violence erupted between the warring ethnic communities of Kukis and Meitei in Manipur’s Jiribam district. Amid the violence, Manipur chief minister Biren Singh resigned.
