'We had decided that whenever we work together, we would leave our personal relationship at home.'
Union Home Minister Amit Shah arrived in strife-torn Manipur on Monday night to try restore peace by hammering out a solution between the warring communities.
In a memorandum submitted to Manipur Governor Anusuiya Uikey, the 21 opposition MPs who signed the document demanded urgent rehabilitation and resettlement of the affected people to bring peace and harmony to the state.
An Indian Army soldier was injured after armed miscreants resorted to unprovoked firing from Kanto Sabal towards Chingmang village on the intervening night of June 18-19.
The house of Manipur PWD Minister Konthoujam Govindas in Bishnupur district was vandalised on Wednesday by a group of people claiming that the government in the strife-torn state is not doing enough to protect locals from militants belonging to another community, officials said.
In fresh violence in Manipur, two houses were torched by a mob in Imphal East district after two armed miscreants forced people to shut their shops on Monday afternoon, police officials said.
For the most battle-hardened, specialised and successful counter-insurgency army in the world, this is an unfamiliar, first-time experience of dealing with the north east's deepest complexities, observes Shekhar Gupta.
Refuting the opposition's claim that Manipur 'is burning', a senior government functionary said on Thursday that no killing has happened in the state since July 18 and asserted that peace and normalcy will be restored soon through ongoing talks with the two warring communities -- Meiteis and Kukis.
'The opposition parties didn't want voting as it would have exposed the cracks in their alliance. They ran away from the House'
The Zomi-Kuki organisation also sought Prime Minister Narendra Modi's intervention for a permanent solution to the ongoing ethnic strife
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"I fear I won't perform well in the class 10 board examination next year, which might affect my dreams of enrolling in a good school in Imphal," Karam said.
China has long coveted Arunachal Pradesh, which it calls Southern Tibet. But, as Venkataraghavan Subha Srinivasan explains, in 1947, the present state of Arunachal Pradesh constituted the North East Frontier Tract of Assam. When India adopted its Constitution on 26 January 1950, NEFT became 'a separate politico-administrative entity' although it was constitutionally still a part of Assam. Its administration was brought directly under the President of India with the Governor of Assam acting as his agent. A revealing excerpt from his book The Origin Story of India's States.
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The exit polls further pointed out that the northeastern state would have a hung house, with Sangma's National People's Party (NPP) emerging as the single-largest party.
Bindyarani Devi wondered if the news of her silver medal-winning effort at the Asian Championships 2023 had reached her parents, in violence-hit Manipur.
After Chief Minister Stalin moved a resolution, even as Ravi was speaking, that the speech was read, the governor walked out of the assembly.
Modi slammed the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) as the most directionless the country has ever seen and cited reviled names, such as East India Company and Indian Mujahideen, to assert that people cannot be misled merely by the use of the country's name.
Armed vigilante groups have been taking the law into their own hands in parts of Manipur, in the wake of ethnic rioting earlier, thus complicating the peace process. At times, militant groups have joined in the fray, creating an even more volatile cocktail of ethnic tension.
Rumours are flying that several people were killed and injured in police action in the town, hours after a bandh called by Indigenous Tribal Leaders Forum (ITLF) concluded at 4 pm.
In most parts of the landlocked northeastern state, items such as rice, potato, onion and egg besides LPG cylinders and petrol are selling at rates much above the ones fixed by the government.
Business establishments remained closed on Tuesday morning and people were asked by security personnel to remain indoors through the public address system in New Chekon area of Imphal East district, where a mob torched two houses after four armed people, including a former MLA, forced people to shut their shops on Monday.
Tension mounted in the hills of Manipur after the May 4 video surfaced on Wednesday showing two women from one of the warring communities being paraded naked by a group of men from the other side.
The resolution moved by Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio was adopted by voice vote during the one-day special session of the Assembly held to discuss the AFSPA, 1958, and its application to Nagaland in the aftermath of the killing of 14 civilians by security forces, including six in a botched anti-terrorist operation, and eight others in subsequent incidents in Mon district on December 4 and 5.
Bimola Thounaojam, the mother of an 18-year-old youth, has been trying frantically trying to work out how to get her son admitted to a college outside Manipur without having to go through the usual net-based admission procedure.
The people of Oting in Mon district in the northeastern state said they will erect a monolith in memory of the 14 people on the first anniversary of the killings.
Hours before a planned mass burial of Kuki-Zomi people killed in Manipur's ethnic violence, the state's high court on Thursday ordered that status quo be maintained at the proposed burial site in Churachandpur district, while ITLF, an apex tribal body also said it was postponing burial service plans following requests from the Union home minister.
A bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justices PS Narasimha and Manoj Misra will be hearing the petition filed by NGO Manipur Tribal Forum.
The electoral fate of 92 candidates will be decided on Saturday, including 12 from the Bharatiya Janata Party, followed by the Congress (18), the National People's Party (11), the Janata Dal-United and the Naga People's Front (10 each).
The ruling Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party are contesting the polls on a 40:20 seat-sharing basis.
Reuters's Indian Photojournalists Adnan Abidi, Amit Dave, Danish Siddiqui and Sanna Irshad Mattoo were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography at Columbia University in Manhattan, October 20, 2022.
The report urged the top court that the matter may be taken up by the petitioners and other parties with utmost sensitivity as any misinformation or rumour or even suspicion may aggravate the situation in Manipur, where things are slowly returning to normal with the concerted efforts of the central and the state governments.
The consequences are dire as essential medical treatments, including dialysis, and medicines for cancer and anti-AIDS drugs remain out of reach for those in desperate need.
Life in the north-eastern state of Manipur continued to limp back to normal as curfew was relaxed in 11 districts, including Imphal West, Bishnupur, Churachandpur and Jiribam, for six hours from 5 am, as no fresh incident of violence was reported, officials said on Wednesday.
Nag Panchami will be celebrated on August 2.
Giving the chilling details of the incident, Guwahati Police Commissioner Diganta Bora said the beheaded body of a 64-year-old woman was found covered with a blanket on the staircase of the Joy Durga Mandir in the precincts of the Kamakhya Temple on June 19, 2019 hours after she was killed.
Over 83 per cent of the more than 13 lakh electorate cast their vote on Monday in the single-day Nagaland state election which passed off by and large peacefully, Chief Electoral Officer V Shashank Shekhar said.
'I told my commander that they were not militants, but full-fledged soldiers with machine guns.'
The assault and humiliation of two women paraded naked in a Manipur village in May sparked nationwide outrage on Thursday with Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying the incident had shamed 140 crore Indians and the Supreme Court terming it 'simply unacceptable'.
