GUWAHATI: Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s directive to security agencies to restore free movement on all roads in violence-hit Manipur will take effect from Saturday. Meanwhile, an influential Kuki-Zo organization has opposed a proposed peace expedition to the hill areas by a conglomerate of 20 Imphal Valley-based groups.
The Committee on Tribal Unity (COTU) said the resolution adopted by the Federations of Civil Society (FOCS) “to march into the hill districts of the Kuki-Zo community” was tantamount to breaching of buffer zones.
“The idea of free movement purported by Home Minster Amit Shah through the Governor of Manipur is nothing but misplaced information on the current situation and reverberation of radical Meitei narrative which would be unattainable discourse,” COTU said in a statement issued on Friday.
The organisation said the transportation of essential commodities through Kuki-Zo dominated National Highway 2 was never stalled or blocked on humanitarian grounds, except for a few occasions when it was done to draw the attention of the Centre “for want of reciprocity from the valley.”
COTU opposed FOCS’s plan to “intrude into Kuki-Zo territory on the pretext of assessing Centre’s initiation of peace which is a precarious political discourse; an initiation of another episode of conflict.”
It appealed to Governor Ajay Kumar Bhalla not to fall into the ethno-centric views of the majoritarian Meitei community and to protect the minority Kuki-Zo community by granting “separate administration” under the constitutional provisions of Article 239A to “maintain the integrity of the country, especially to safeguard the North Eastern Frontiers of India.”
On March 4, FOCS president T Manihar had stated the objective of the expedition was to deliver a message of peace.
“After discussing the Union Home Minister’s directive, we decided to take out the peace expedition,” he had stated.
FOCS is reportedly planning to go up to Naga-majority Senapati district from the Kangla Fort in Imphal. The road to Senapati goes through the Kuki-majority Kangpokpi district.
Chairing a high-level review meeting on the Manipur security situation in New Delhi on March 1, Shah also directed that strict action should be taken against anyone attempting to create obstructions during free movement.
Manipur has remained ethnically partitioned ever since the eruption of ethnic violence on May 3, 2023, which claimed over 250 lives and displaced 60,000 others.