E-Paper
Manipur: Curfew relaxed till 10pm in Imphal districts
The orders issued on Friday by the respective district magistrates of Imphal East and Imphal West stated that the curfew has been relaxed “due to the improvement of law and order situation”
The Manipur government has extended curfew timings for all areas in Imphal East and Imphal West districts from 5am to 10pm for Saturday (October 21) against the usual timing of 7pm.
A total curfew was clamped in Imphal West, Imphal East, Churachandpur, Kangpokpi and other valley districts following the continued state-wide violence, which began on May 3 and has been in force since then except for relaxations of some hours.
As the situation slowly returned to a semblance of normalcy, it was relaxed from 5am to 6pm on most days and later up to 7pm in Imphal West and Imphal East in the recent past. However, it was often clamped again without notice due to fresh incidents of violence.
The orders issued on Friday by the respective district magistrates of Imphal East and Imphal West stated that the curfew has been relaxed “due to the improvement of law and order situation”.
“There is a necessity to relax the restriction of movement to facilitate the general public to purchasing essential items including medicines and food items etc,” Imphal East magistrate said in the order.
“This relaxation shall, however, not apply to any gatherings/large-scale movement of persons/sit-in-protests/rallies etc, which is unlawful in nature,” the order said.
“However, movement of persons belonging to essential services such as health, electricity, PHED, petrol pumps, schools/colleges, municipality, press and electronic media, functioning of courts and to and fro movement of flight passengers to the airport and contractor/worker with valid airport entry permit card will be exempted from the imposition of curfew,” the order of additional district magistrate, Imphal West, said.
It may be noted that both Imphal East and Imphal West district authorities had once extended the relaxed curfew timing for all areas under the above districts from 5am to 9pm on September 14 against the usual timing of 5am to 6pm.
Manipur had been witnessing state-wide violence since the first week of May, in which around 175 people have so far been killed, and nearly 50,000 people have been displaced, besides burning many villages and localities.
