The public assertions by a section of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLAs including Bishnupur MLA Govindas Konthoujam and state leaders that a “popular government” in Manipur will be formed soon cannot be casual remarks or innocent expressions of optimism. They are politically loaded interventions made against a hard constitutional deadline and an even harder political reality. Earlier assertions by some of BJP MLAs and state leaders was that the “popular government” would be formed latest by January 26, 2026. However, the acclaimed January 26 deadline has also passed without realising the restoration of the “popular government”. With President’s Rule imposed on February 13, 2025 and the Manipur Legislative Assembly kept under suspended animation, February 13, 2026 marks the outer constitutional limit for Parliament to either revive an elected government or dissolve the Assembly. The insistence that reinstatement is imminent is therefore less a reflection of preparedness on the ground and more an attempt to manufacture inevitability in the face of deep structural impediments.
Any serious assessment must begin with the fact that Manipur remains trapped in a condition of suspended constitutional life since the eruption of violence on May 3, 2023. The conflict has not been resolved; it has been administratively frozen. Ethnic segregation has hardened into spatial reality, buffer zones – regardless of official denials – have normalised the partitioning of territory, free movement along National Highways remains fragile and contested, and tens of thousands of citizens continue to live in displacement. In this context, the restoration of an elected government risks becoming a procedural gesture that conceals, rather than addresses, the collapse of substantive constitutional order.
Crucially, the present moment cannot be understood without recalling that the demand for the removal of Chief Minister Nongthombam Biren Singh and the imposition of President’s Rule did not originate from the Centre or from the opposition alone. Kuki-Zomi bodies and political actors were among the most vocal in demanding removal of N Biren Singh and central intervention, arguing that the state government had lost neutrality, legitimacy, and moral authority in a violent conflict involving ethnic groups. President’s Rule, when imposed in February 2025, was therefore received by these groups not as a constitutional aberration but as a necessary intervention to arrest what they perceived as a partisan and failed state government.
What has changed since then is not their commitment to constitutionalism, but their understanding of what constitutional justice requires. Kuki-Zomi groups continue to assert faith in the Indian Constitution, yet they now argue that the restoration of an elected government in Manipur must be preceded by a political solution – specifically, the creation of a Separate Administration as Union Territory with a legislature carved out of Manipur. Their position is explicit – solution first, popular government later. In practical terms, they insist that they can no longer be governed within the existing territorial and political framework of Manipur.
The political irony is stark. The same Kuki-Zomi groups that demanded President’s Rule now categorically oppose any move towards reinstating a “popular government” in Manipur. This shift constitutes not a tactical delay but a structural veto. The armed militant groups, United Kuki National Army (UKNA), the Kuki National Organisation (KNO) and United People’s Front (UPF); and other Kuki-Zomi bodies have publicly warned their MLAs against joining or supporting any reinstated government. Participation in a revived Assembly, they argue, would legitimise a state structure they no longer recognise as capable of guaranteeing their security or political future. This is not a rejection of the Constitution per se, but a rejection of Manipur as a viable constitutional unit in its present form until a separate political-administrative arrangement is secured.
This position exposes the fundamental contradiction at the heart of the BJP’s claim that a “popular government” can be restored. Further, this position renders the idea of a consensual reinstatement virtually impossible. A government restored under such conditions would not merely face opposition; it would face active non-cooperation from an entire political constituency that has already withdrawn moral consent from the state structure itself. Legislative arithmetic cannot substitute for legitimacy in a society where consent has fractured along ethnic and territorial lines. Reinstating the Assembly under these conditions would produce not democratic normalcy, but institutional paralysis.
The resignation of N Biren Singh on February 9, 2025 must also be understood in this light. It was not simply the fall of an individual leader but the symbolic collapse of a governing or political order that had lost credibility across communities. President’s Rule followed not because the BJP lacked numerical strength in the Assembly, but because the very idea of state authority had fractured. The constitutional machinery had not failed formally; it had failed substantively. Any attempt to revive the same Assembly without addressing this foundational rupture risks repeating the conditions that necessitated Central rule in the first place.
Proponents of early reinstatement invoke constitutional orthodoxy, arguing that Article 356 is exceptional and must be lifted at the earliest opportunity. In normal circumstances, this argument would be compelling. But Manipur is not experiencing a normal case of administrative breakdown; it is a theatre of internal conflict with regional, transnational, and geopolitical implications. It is confronting a crisis of constitutional sovereignty, where the state’s authority over territory, population, and violence is deeply contested. In such circumstances, procedural constitutionalism, applied mechanically, risks becoming an instrument of denial rather than restoration.
The BJP’s political motivation for reinstatement is transparent. Prolonged President’s Rule keeps Manipur’s governance failure squarely in the national spotlight and denies the party the optics of electoral legitimacy. Restoring a BJP-led government will benefit the party retaining its lone seat in Rajya Sabha. Reinstating an elected government would allow responsibility to be rhetorically devolved back to Imphal, even if real power over security and negotiations continues to reside with New Delhi. This is not governance readiness; it is political damage control and political calculations.
Yet internal constraints are severe. The BJP legislature party remains burdened by the legacy of the crisis, with many MLAs widely perceived as ethnically aligned actors rather than neutral representatives. No clear, credible, and widely acceptable leadership alternative has emerged while the Manipur BJP legislators have surrendered their right to choose their own leader to the BJP national leadership. Reinstating the Assembly under these circumstances would not reset politics and resolve the conflict; it would resurrect a discredited arrangement under a different constitutional date.
This is where the unstated but decisive logic of the Indian state comes into view. The reluctance of New Delhi to rush reinstatement must therefore be read as a strategic choice, not mere indecision. President’s Rule provides political insulation that no elected state government currently can. It allows the Union government to manage security deployments, negotiate with armed groups, and recalibrate administrative arrangements without being immediately constrained by local electoral compulsions or factional pressures.
There is also a harder, more uncomfortable question – whether New Delhi was, in effect, waiting for an opportunity to impose President’s Rule in Manipur. For years, counter-insurgency operations against Manipur insurgent groups led by Meiteis have been constrained by the geography of the India–Myanmar border, where base camps lie across an increasingly unstable frontier. The collapse of the Myanmar state following the 2021 February coup, and the subsequent civil war, transformed Manipur into a critical node in India’s eastern security architecture. Central rule offers greater operational flexibility for intelligence coordination, cross-border security management, and counter-insurgency recalibration in ways that an elected state government, bound by local political considerations, might resist or complicate.
This geopolitical context is indispensable. Manipur sits at the intersection of India’s Act East ambitions, Myanmar’s internal collapse, transnational arms flows, international narcotics networks and poppy plantations in Manipur, and illegal immigrants across a porous border. In such a situation, prolonged Central control becomes intelligible as a security strategy, even if it remains democratically troubling. President’s Rule allows the Indian state to integrate Manipur more tightly into its regional security calculus, including Act East considerations and border management priorities treating it less as a routine federal unit and more as a sensitive frontier zone.
Another unresolved dimension is accountability. The violence since May 2023 has produced mass displacement, extensive destruction of property, and serious allegations of human rights violations. Restoring an elected government without a credible framework for truth, justice, and accountability risks institutionalising impunity. For victims, such a move would signal closure without redress; for the state, it would deepen the perception that democratic processes are instruments of political convenience rather than moral responsibility.
The constitutional dilemma is therefore acute. Dissolving the Assembly after February 13, 2026 would necessitate elections in conditions that are manifestly hostile to free and fair participation. Large sections of the electorate remain displaced, constituencies are effectively inaccessible across ethnic lines, and the neutrality of the local administrative apparatus is widely contested. Elections under such circumstances would satisfy constitutional form while emptying it of substance.
Reinstating the Assembly avoids immediate elections but resurrects a political structure that failed to prevent, mitigate, or resolve the crisis. Both paths are constitutionally available; neither is democratically satisfying. The choice confronting the Indian state is not between democracy and authoritarianism, but between two deeply compromised constitutional options.
The January 26 deadline rhetoric, wrapped in the symbolism of Republic Day, attempts to convert a constitutional calendar into a substitute for political resolution. But republics are sustained not by anniversaries but by the lived experience of equal citizenship. In Manipur, that experience remains fractured, constrained, and unequal.
If reinstatement is to be more than a performative act, it would require conditions that are currently absent – genuine security normalisation across the state, unconditional restoration of free movement on National Highways, credible rehabilitation of displaced populations, and political leadership capable of transcending ethnic mobilisation. None of these prerequisites have been met.
This leaves President’s Rule, despite its democratic deficits, as the least destabilising option in the short term. But its continuation cannot rest on silence or inertia. If Central rule is to persist, it must be accompanied by explicit benchmarks, transparent objectives, and a credible political roadmap. Otherwise, Central Rule risks becoming an exercise in managed drift rather than strategic design.
Manipur today does not merely lack an elected government; it lacks a shared constitutional imagination. Reinstalling a BJP government under present conditions would neither restore trust nor repair sovereignty. It would merely close a constitutional chapter without resolving the crisis that forced it open. If the elected government is restored, it would still be under security architecture of the Indian state. The real challenge before the Indian republic lies not in meeting deadlines, but in restoring the conditions under which democracy in Manipur can function so that its citizens are not deprived of the right to life with dignity and protection.
Senior Editor: Imphal Review of Arts and Politics
