The Coordinating Committee on Manipur Integrity (Cocomi) on Monday submitted a four-page representation to Prime Minister Narendra Modi through the
Prime Minister’s Office in which they said the Centre must immediately intervene to restore normalcy in the strife-torn northeastern state “or else the society will deteriorate further”.

“Even the vocabulary of the people is affected by the conflict with many becoming more militant and if this continues, it may further impact the security situation in the state,” the Cocomi said in the representation.

The Cocomi spokesperson Khuraijam Athouba told The Telegraph from Delhi that they had submitted the representation with the resolutions adopted at the mass rally held in Imphal on July 29 against Chin-Kuki narco-terrorism, the causes of the ongoing conflict and their demands to check the unrest.

In the representation, Cocomi — a conglomerate of leading valley-based civil society organisations — said the conflict was “not” a religious or a tribal-non tribal issue. “It is a manifestation of the simmering tension over deforestation, opium poppy cultivation and large-scale change in the demography in specific areas of the state mainly caused by illegal immigrants from Myanmar in specific areas.”

The five resolutions adopted at the July 29 rally include the total extermination of Chin-Kuki narco-terrorism to end the current conflict between the Meiteis and the Kukis, no separate administrative arrangement in Manipur, implementation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in the state, and a special session of the state Assembly by August 5 to “adopt some action-oriented resolutions” to save the state.

The Cocomi move came a day after it had declared the “social boycott” of the BJP-led state government as the latter did not respect the public resolution to convene the Assembly session by August 5. On Friday, the government recommended to the governor to summon the Assembly session on August 21.

The representation also came amid sustained demand by the Opposition parties that Modi should make a statement on the Manipur situation in the ongoing session of Parliament. The session is scheduled to end on August 11.

He had spoken only once about Manipur on July 20 outside Parliament, condemning the May 4 sexual assault of two Kuki-Zo women by a mob after a purported video capturing the act surfaced a day earlier.

Asserting the conflict “can only be inferred to be pre-planned as the tension started building up” from April 27 when an open gym to be inaugurated by the chief minister was vandalised, the Cocomi stated that the “involvement” of cadres of the Chin Defence Force (CDF) in neighbouring Myanmar in the conflict can’t be denied.

“As the present conflict involves national security, it is of utmost importance that this aspect is thoroughly probed and curtailed,” the representation said.

There is considerable unease in the Kuki-Zo communities over the foreigner-illegal immigrant narrative which has gathered momentum during the ongoing conflict.

The Kuki Inpi Manipur, the apex body of Kukis in the strife-torn state, has asked the Centre to spell its stand on the “incessant terming of the Kukis as foreigners or otherwise illegal immigrants by the state government” and the majority Meiteis, who mostly live in the valley districts.

They asked the Centre to clearly state whether they think the Kukis as foreigners or as true citizens of India.

Manipur shares a 398km border with Myanmar while Mizoram around 510km. Chin people of Myanmar share the same ancestry as the Kuki-Zo people of Manipur and Mizoram. They have a presence in India and neighbouring Bangladesh and Myanmar.

The Cocomi also flagged the state’s War on Drugs campaign leading to the large-scale destruction of poppy farms as “one of the trigger points for the present crisis”. Kuki-Zo groups under suspension of operations have been involved in poppy plantation and producing heroin from opium, the Cocomi stated.

Valley-based organisations and Manipur chief minister N. Biren Singh have been blaming the influx of Kuki-Chin people from Myanmar, cross-border narco trade and Kuki militant groups under suspension of operations for the ongoing unrest in the state.