An eight-member fact-finding team of the CPIML on Sunday blamed the Manipur government for the violence in the state and asserted that the removal of chief minister N. Biren Singh was a prerequisite for restoring normalcy.

The team began their visit to various strife-torn areas in the state on August 10. They arrived in Imphal on Sunday and are scheduled to depart on Tuesday.

“The government is squarely to blame for the violence and loss of lives and property suffered by the affected persons. It is a matter of shame that the Supreme Court has had to intervene to ensure that basic steps are taken in investigating these gross and inhuman crimes,” the fact-finding team said in a statement.

It stressed that the unprecedented ethnic segregation of the Meitei and Kuki communities in Manipur was the gift of the BJP government on the 75th anniversary of India’s Independence.

“Never before in the history of India has a government overseen such a complete decimation of society’s social fabric that has resulted in communities within a state being ethnically segregated into different parts of the state. The double-engine BJP government has manufactured this segregation in the state, which despite previous conflicts, was able to reconcile and live together,” the team members said.

They further said: “It is the resignation of chief minister N. Biren Singh as chief minister that will mark the first step in the journey towards any feasible political solution to this humanitarian crisis.”

The CPIML leaders also condemned the miserable response of the Prime Minister and the Union home minister Amit Shah in Parliament on the Manipur violence and said that it exposed their bankruptcy in offering any comprehensive political solution to this crisis.

The team issued an appeal to the affected communities to cease all hostilities to ensure that the suffering masses in the relief camps can be properly taken care of as a gesture of moving forward from the conflict and towards a resolution to the present impasse.

With regard to the relief camps, the team said that the situation was grim.

“Across the valley and hills, thousands of internally displaced persons live in desperate conditions. Basic services are lacking, and the arrangements are insufficient as the government has wiped its hands off the suffering people,” the team’s report said.

Pointing out that only Rs 80 per person in addition to some rice and dal was being given by the state government to the Meities at the relief camp at Shyamasakhi High School in Imphal, the team termed it insufficient.

Similar situations prevailed at relief camps in Moirang, Kangpokpi, Akampat and Churachandpur. Infectious diseases such as measles, chicken pox and viral fever were breaking out.