GUWAHATI: Manipur is limping back to normalcy after over a month-long unrest which was triggered by ethnic clashes between Meiteis and Kukis.
Official sources said no untoward incident was reported from any part of the state during the past 48 hours.
The state’s Information and Public Relations Minister and government spokesperson Dr Sapam Ranjan said it was evident from the non-occurrence of any untoward incidents in the past two days that peace and normalcy were returning to the state.
According to him, 50,648 people, displaced by the violence, are lodged in 349 relief camps set up in the Imphal Valley and some hill districts.
Ranjan said essential commodities were being brought by using National Highway 37 which enters the state from Assam’s Barak Valley. National Highway 2, which traverses from Nagaland, is the shorter route but the protesting Kuki organisations have enforced a blockade on it.
The minister said altogether 2,370 trucks, carrying essential items, arrived in the state by Saturday.
“We are trying to make the Khongsang railway station functional early to bring goods by trains,” he said.
Sharing details on the recovery of arms and ammunition, Ranjan said 990 arms and around 13,500 bullets were recovered. There are no official figures but the miscreants reportedly looted some 4,000 guns and at least one lakh bullets from police stations and battalions during the violence.
Meanwhile, the Kuki MLAs camping in Delhi are trying to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah to pursue the demand for a “separate administration” for the Kukis.
In the Imphal valley, members of the All Manipur Yoga Fraternity Union staged a sit-in protest on Sunday on the present situation. The union said it would not celebrate the International Day of Yoga on June 21 and instead, observe it as a day of mourning as lives were lost and people were also injured and displaced.
Nearly 100 people were killed in the violence which broke out on May 3 after a “Tribal Solidarity March” organised by a tribal students’ union to oppose the move for the inclusion of Meiteis – the state’s largest community – in the Scheduled Tribes list.