The Himalayan Challenges Before Yumnam Khemchand’s Government To Restore Fundamental Rights of Manipur’s Citizens

The swearing-in of Yumnam Khemchand as the 13th Chief Minister of Manipur on February 4, 2026, heading a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, marks neither a return to normalcy nor a democratic renewal in the substantive sense. It is, rather, a politically compelled restoration of an elected government, shaped less by the lived realities of Manipur’s devastated social landscape than by a convergence of national electoral calculations, strategic anxieties, and the imperatives of India’s security architecture in the eastern frontier. The reinstallation of an elected government after almost a year of President’s Rule does not resolve the crisis of constitutional governance in Manipur; instead, it exposes the depth of that crisis.

This government has emerged not from reconciliation or accountability, but from compulsion – the need to manage forthcoming Assembly elections in Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Puducherry; to save the party and prepare the ground for the 13th Manipur Legislative Assembly election due in 2027; to retain the state’s lone Rajya Sabha seat represented by the BJP; and to signal political stability amid intensifying geopolitical flux in the Indo-Myanmar borderlands. These imperatives have outweighed the more urgent democratic obligation to restore the fundamental rights of Manipur’s citizens – most notably the right to life with dignity, equality before the law, and freedom of movement.

The challenge before Yumnam Khemchand, therefore, is not merely administrative or political. It is civilisational and constitutional. His full power tenure – likely no more than seven months if the Model Code of Conduct for the 2027 election comes into force – will be judged not by legislative output or coalition management, but by whether the Indian Republic can still credibly claim to function in Manipur as a constitutional democracy rather than a managed security zone.

An Elected Government Born of Political Necessity, Not Democratic Resolution

The context of this government’s formation is inseparable from the violent conflict that erupted on May 3, 2023, under the watch of the same BJP-led dispensation in the state. That conflict – marked by killings, missing, mass displacement, targeted violence, destruction of settlements, and the effective collapse of civil administration across large parts of the state – was never politically or morally accounted for. No credible independent commission fixed responsibility. No chain of command was held answerable. The rule of law fractured, and with it the social contract between the state and its citizens.

The imposition of President’s Rule on February 13, 2025, was projected as a corrective constitutional intervention. In practice, it functioned as a tactical pause rather than a strategic reset. Despite direct central control, normalcy was not restored. National Highways remained contested. Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) remained warehoused in relief camps waiting for return, rehabilitation, or restitution. Armed groups operated with impunity in the hills, while civilian populations in the valley lived under a regime of restricted movement and permanent insecurity.

The fragility of this “restored” democracy was laid bare within twenty-four hours of the new government’s formation. On February 5, 2026, violent protests erupted in Tuibong area of Churachandpur district against “Kuki-Zo” MLAs who had joined the new government. Roads were blocked, intimidation was reported, and the message was unmistakable – participation in constitutional politics would invite collective retribution. These protests were not spontaneous expressions of dissent; they were acts of coercive politics aimed at delegitimising representative authority itself.

That elected legislators could be publicly punished for exercising their constitutional mandate exposes the hollowness of electoral democracy in Manipur today. It also underscores a more disturbing reality – in parts of the state, democratic choice is no longer protected by the state but policed by militias, extra-constitutional actors.

That the Centre – under the same party now forming the government – failed to restore normalcy during President’s Rule raises a fundamental question – what qualitatively changes with the return of an elected government, particularly one constrained by time, internal dissent, and the normalisation of political intimidation?

The Persistence of Highway Blockades and the Suspension of Citizenship

One of the starkest indictments of the post-conflict order in Manipur is the continued denial of free movement along National Highways – NH-2 and NH-37. These highways are not merely infrastructural assets; they are constitutional arteries. Their effective closure to large sections of the Meitei population represents a suspension of citizenship itself. When citizens cannot traverse national highways within their own state without fear of attack, extortion, or blockade, the promise of equality before the law collapses.

The Tuibong protests must be read alongside this larger geography of coercion. Road blockades, whether on National Highways or district roads, have become instruments of political veto. They are used not merely to express grievance but to enforce conformity and punish deviation. In such a landscape, the distinction between protest and siege collapses.

The inability or unwillingness of successive governments, including under President’s Rule, to guarantee free movement exposes a deeper malaise – the selective application of sovereign power. The Indian state appears capable of deploying huge security forces, but hesitant to impose law uniformly. This selective sovereignty has normalised the idea that armed coercion and mob veto can dictate political outcomes, a precedent that threatens not only Manipur but the integrity of the Republic itself.

For Yumnam Khemchand’s government, restoring free movement is not a matter of negotiation or appeasement; it is a constitutional obligation. Failure to do so would confirm that elected authority in Manipur remains subordinate to extra-constitutional power.

Internally Displaced Persons and the Politics of Permanent Displacement

Nearly three years after the outbreak of violence, tens of thousands of IDPs remain unable to return to their homes. Relief camps have become semi-permanent spaces of abandonment rather than temporary shelters. The absence of a comprehensive rehabilitation and resettlement policy – one that guarantees security, reconstruction, compensation, and justice – signals a quiet acceptance of ethnic spatial segregation as a fait accompli.

The events in Churachandpur district underline why return remains impossible. When even elected representatives are not safe from intimidation within their own constituencies, the prospect of ordinary displaced families returning to mixed or contested localities becomes illusory. Displacement, in this sense, is no longer a humanitarian failure alone; it is a political outcome being actively preserved.

This is perhaps the most dangerous legacy of the conflict. When displacement is normalised, ethnic cleansing acquires administrative legitimacy. The longer IDPs remain in camps, the more irreversible demographic re-engineering becomes. Yumnam Khemchand’s government inherits not just a humanitarian crisis, but a moral one – whether the Indian state will sanction outcomes produced by violence through bureaucratic inertia.

Rehabilitation without accountability is merely displacement by other means. Any serious attempt at resettlement must therefore be accompanied by truth-telling, identification of perpetrators, and institutional reform. Without this, “return” becomes a hollow ritual rather than a restoration of rights.

The Unresolved Question of Accountability

Perhaps the most corrosive challenge before the new government is the unresolved question of accountability for the violence. Who ordered what? Who failed to act, and when? Why did the state fail to control the violence on May 3, 2023, particularly in Churachandpur? Why didn’t the police arrest those sophisticated gun wielding persons amongst the mass rally in Churachandpur on May 3, 2023? Why were arms looted? Why civilians were left defenceless? Why security forces were unevenly deployed between the hills and the valley? Why were not the laws enforced uniformly? These questions have been systematically deferred, if not deliberately buried.

The absence of accountability has produced a culture of impunity in which threats are issued openly. The announcement by the so-called Village Volunteers Eastern Zone of cash rewards for killing Nemcha Kipgen, L. M. Khaute, and Ngursanglur Sanate  marks a chilling escalation. The Tuibong protests form part of the same continuum – intimidation as political practice.

When elected representatives and community leaders can be publicly threatened or targeted, and the state response remains muted, the message is unmistakable – coercion works. For Yumnam Khemchand, confronting this reality will require political courage that transcends ethnicity, coalition arithmetic and electoral caution.

The Separate Administration Demand and the Crisis of Federalism

Some “Kuki-Zo” MLAs and “Kuki-Zo” bodies continue to oppose the very existence of the new government, reiterating their demand for a Separate Administration in the form of a Union Territory with a legislature. What the Tuibong protests reveal is that this demand is increasingly enforced not through constitutional persuasion but through social and physical coercion – by making participation in state-level democratic institutions politically untenable.

This poses a profound challenge to Indian federalism. If territorial reconfiguration becomes the reward for sustained violence, intimidation of legislators, and obstruction of constitutional processes, it sets a precedent with implications far beyond Manipur.

The dilemma before the Centre and the state government is stark – accommodation without disarmament legitimises coercion, while rejection without political outreach risks deepening alienation. Yet any meaningful dialogue must occur within the framework of the Constitution respecting and safeguarding the civilisational and political entity of Manipur, not under threat of mob violence or armed reprisal. Yumnam Khemchand’s government must assert this principle unambiguously, even if the Centre hesitates.

Conclusion: Democracy Without Sovereignty Is an Empty Form

The installation of Yumnam Khemchand’s government has clarified, rather than resolved, the nature of the crisis in Manipur. What confronts the state today is not a temporary breakdown of order that can be remedied through administrative adjustment or political messaging, but a structural rupture between constitutional form and sovereign function. President’s Rule placing the State Legislative Assembly under suspended animation has been revoked, a government has been sworn in, and yet the state’s authority remains fragmented, unevenly exercised, and openly contested by militias or non-state actors. This is the defining contradiction of Manipur’s present.

The events following the government’s formation – particularly the violent protests in Tuibong against “Kuki-Zo” MLAs for participating in constitutional governance – underscore a critical point – representative democracy cannot survive where participation itself becomes punishable. When elected legislators are coerced for exercising their mandate, the Assembly ceases to function as a forum of popular sovereignty and becomes instead a fragile façade, tolerated only so long as it does not disrupt entrenched coercive arrangements on the ground.

This erosion of sovereignty has been normalised over time through a combination of strategic ambiguity and political evasion. The prolonged closure of National Highways, the persistence of armed militia formations, the failure to dismantle the infrastructure of violence, and the absence of accountability for the events of May 3, 2023, are not isolated failures. Together, they amount to the creation of a differentiated regime of citizenship in which constitutional rights are selectively suspended in the name of stability, accommodation, or political calculus.

President’s Rule, far from correcting this trajectory, institutionalised it. The Centre governed without governing, administered without restoring authority, and presided over a frozen conflict that hardened territorial and ethnic divisions. The return to an elected government without first re-establishing the state’s monopoly over legitimate violence has merely transferred this unresolved crisis back onto an even weaker political executive.

Yumnam Khemchand’s government thus operates within a narrow and unforgiving corridor. It lacks time, it lacks coercive autonomy, and it inherits a deeply compromised institutional environment. Yet these constraints do not absolve it of responsibility. On the contrary, they sharpen the question of political will. The immediate test before the government is not reconciliation in the abstract, but enforcement of constitutional minimums – free movement on National Highways, return and rehabilitation of IDPs to their homes within stipulated time, protection of elected representatives, dismantling of armed militia groups, and the initiation of a credible process of accountability. Without these, governance reduces to routine administration over an abnormal political order.

More fundamentally, the Manipur crisis raises uncomfortable questions for the Indian Republic itself. Can a constitutional democracy tolerate zones where sovereignty is negotiated rather than exercised? Can federalism survive if territorial reconfiguration is incentivised through violence and legislative participation is penalised through intimidation? And can citizenship retain meaning when the state implicitly accepts displacement, segregation, and coercive veto as durable political facts?

If Manipur is allowed to drift further into this condition of managed instability, the consequences will not remain confined to the state. The precedent it sets – of elections without authority, governance without accountability, and peace without justice – will travel. It will weaken the normative foundations of the Republic in other conflict-prone regions, where the temptation to substitute constitutional resolution with security management already looms large.

The choice, therefore, is not merely before Yumnam Khemchand’s government, but before the Indian state as a whole. Either sovereignty is reasserted in constitutional terms, or democracy in Manipur will continue as an empty procedural shell – invoked ritualistically, violated routinely, and defended selectively. History suggests that such arrangements do not stabilise societies; they merely defer reckoning.

Manipur today stands at that edge. What happens next will determine not only the fate of this government, but the credibility of the Republic’s claim that its Constitution applies with equal force to all its citizens, in all its territories, without exception.

RAJKUMAR BOBICHAND

Senior Editor: Imphal Review of Arts and Politics