No takers for Manipur interdistrict buses in state split into Meitei, Kuki zones
The administration in the state eventually called off a move it announced only on Tuesday, nearly a year after a similar plan fell through following an equally insipid response
Two white 15-seater Manipur State Transport (MST) buses were parked at a depot in the state capital Imphal on Wednesday morning. Their high-profile trips were highly anticipated. The windscreens of both were plastered with freshly printed stickers. “Imphal-CCPUR”, said a sticker on the bus that was to travel to Churachandpur. “Imphal-Senapati” said the other.
By sundown, neither bus had moved an inch, nor found a willing passenger.
The stickers were stripped off, the buses wheeled into their parking bays. A fresh attempt by the Manipur government to resume travel between the two districts, which have been scythed apart by ethnic violence for almost 20 months, had failed a second time, underscoring the unrelenting rift between Kukis and Meiteis.
The administration in the embattled state eventually called off a move it announced only on Tuesday, nearly a year after a similar plan fell through following an equally insipid response.
Churachandpur and Kangpokpi, through which the buses were to pass, are Kuki-Zo-majority districts, and Imphal is a Meitei-dominated one.
Drivers and local residents said they were concerned about the threat of abductions and attacks, despite the Manipur government assuring commuters of their safety and stressing that security forces would be deployed adequately along the treacherous routes.
“Passengers from the Naga community and a few others are travelling, but not those from the Kuki and Meitei communities,” said a bus driver at the Imphal depot.
Meisnam James, a resident of Kangpokpi district, who was staying at the Sajiwa relief camp, said he has not availed the bus service due to safety concerns. “I wanted to go and visit my place in Kangpokpi but I don’t want to take the risk as I have a family here to take care of. I will go only when complete peace is restored,” he said.
Around 260 people have died and 60,000 displaced in ethnic clashes that began in May 2023 between the Meitei and the Kuki communities but have since engulfed the entire state.
A spell of relative calm of two months was shattered after a 31-year-old woman was allegedly shot, raped, and set on fire by suspected members of the radical Meitei organisation Arambai Tenggol last month.
That set off a fresh spate of violence. Security forces gunned down 10 Kuki militants in Jiribam after a group of armed men attacked a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) post on November 11. The next day, the bodies of two Meitei civilians were recovered from a village in Jiribam.
Six members of a Meitei family from the same village — three women and three children — were abducted by suspected Kuki militants the same day. Their bodies were found days later near the state’s border with Assam.
The fallout of the long-running ethnic hostilities has meant that the Meiteis, who live largely in the plains of the Imphal valley, and the Kukis, who predominantly live in the hills, have withdrawn to their respective strongholds. In response, security forces have created buffer zones in different border districts, set up camps and posts on highways.
The government on Tuesday issued a notification ordering the resumption of the service.
“The interdistrict traffic, which had been disrupted by prolonged ethnic violence in the state, will be resumed from December 4,” said the order.
The chief secretary of Manipur on December 21 last year ordered an MST bus to travel on the Imphal-Kangpokpi-Mao and Imphal-Churachandpur routes. However, the bus on the former travelled with just five passengers and the second did not get a single one.
The government’s latest attempts to resume public transport services met with stiff resistance from Meitei and Kuki-Zo groups, and civil society organizations, including the Committee on Tribal Unity (CoTU) in Sadar Hills of Kangpokpi district, imposed a 48-hour shutdown from midnight on December 3.
A protester, in a video statement, said, “The Kuki-Zo communities in Sadar Hills strongly oppose this move, accusing the government of attempting to ‘forcefully normalise’ the situation in the region.”