GUWAHATI: There was a high drama outside beleaguered Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh’s official residence in Imphal on Friday afternoon.
The Manipur CM was scheduled to go to Raj Bhawan, barely 200 metres away, at 1 pm to tender his resignation which was later rescheduled to 3 pm.
Around 2:20 pm, the Manipur CM came out in a convoy hundreds of women blocked his path and prevented the convoy from proceeding towards Raj Bhavan.
They asked Singh to not resign and chanted slogans in his support. Upon this, Singh returned to his residence without tendering his resignation.
After some time. a few ministers came out and read out Singh’s resignation letter. A section of women tore down the letter after it was handed over to them.
Later, the BJP announced Singh decided against quitting as people and civil society organisations wanted him to continue. However, his critics said he enacted a drama to save his chair.
It was only on Thursday evening that a mob of hundreds of people attempted to march up to his residence with the body of one of the two persons killed in the morning. They were angry that the state government has not been able to stop the violence and the killings.
It took several hours for the police to thwart the attempt. The personnel had to fire a barrage of tear gas shells to disperse the crowd.
Speculation had been rife in Manipur since Friday morning that Singh would resign as he failed to contain the violence despite the deployment of 35,000 personnel of army and central paramilitary forces in the state.
BJP sources said Singh had reached out to some of his ministers and MLAs on Thursday night to gain their confidence.
Recently, Union minister RK Ranjan Singh made no bones about admitting that the state government “completely” failed to maintain law and order. His house was torched by a mob.