Celebrated Manipuri actor Rajkumar Somendra, popularly known as Kaiku, on Thursday resigned from the primary membership of the BJP over the state government’s “inept handling of the current ethnic turmoil and the brutal murder of two students”, party sources said.

Kaiku, who has acted in around 400 films, submitted his resignation to the leadership of the BJP’s state unit even as its top leaders requested him to reconsider his decision.

A resident of Thangmeiband in Imphal West, Kaiku contested the 2019 Lok Sabha polls as an Independent and joined the BJP in November 2021.

In his resignation letter, Kaiku said: “My priority is ‘public first and party second’ for which I applied my mind to incline with the public in these hard times.”

It is disheartening to notice that the government is yet to take proactive measures to resolve the unceasing public disorder besetting the state for more than four months now, Kaiku said.

“To be honest, I joined the BJP thinking that the party would bring a significant change in our state with its double-engine government.... With this in mind, I thought the central leaders would act swiftly over the ongoing issue and put an end to the conflict and trusted them. But, the central leaders seem like paying no attention to the pain and misery of the people and they were against every expectation of the people,” he said.