Lok Sabha MP Dr Bimol flags the Home Ministry's silence on Suspension of Operations pact queries, seeks the Speaker's intervention, and questions Manipur's NRC preparedness at an Imphal press meet.
Imphal, Sept. 18: The Union Home Ministry has missed its own one-month deadline to respond to questions Lok Sabha MP Dr Bimol raised in the House on the Suspension of Operations (SoO) agreement, the MP said at a press conference in Imphal on Friday. Dr Bimol said he has since written to the Speaker asking that the ministry be directed to reply.
Dr Bimol said the questions were raised under Rule 377 on August 11, 2026, after being submitted to the Speaker on August 7. Under House rules, the concerned ministry is required to respond within one month. That window has now closed with no reply, he said, prompting his follow-up letter to the Speaker.
Dr Bimol said his original questions centered on a lack of clarity around the terms of the SoO agreement, signed with armed groups currently under ceasefire in the state. He said he had specifically asked whether compliance reports exist for the agreement and whether any have been made public. He also alleged that extortion has continued on state highways and said some groups covered by the ceasefire arrangement have been linked to such activity, without citing verified evidence for specific incidents. Dr Bimol called on the Home Ministry to place any relevant compliance documentation before the public and asked that the agreement be reviewed.
With the one-month response deadline now passed, the matter remains open. NE Dispatch has sought comment from the Home Ministry on the status of a reply and will update this report if one is received.
NRC preparedness questioned
At the same press conference, Dr Bimol also addressed the National Register of Citizens and the state's law and order situation, in remarks separate from the SoO issue. He welcomed the Centre's decision to defer the census in Manipur — a step he said had been sought given continuing displacement in the state — but said the deferral had been requested partly on the understanding that an NRC exercise would precede any fresh census. He said the state's preparedness for that exercise remains inadequate.
Dr Bimol said a State Population Commission was constituted in March 2023 but, according to information available to his office, has functioned without a chairman since its inception and lacks dedicated in-house technical staff, relying instead on an external consultant. He said the commission has held only two consultative meetings in three years, and that civil society leaders have separately raised similar concerns publicly.
He also said Right to Information applications filed by his office seeking details on Manipur's 1951 NRC records were turned down by the concerned department on the grounds that the query concerned a "historical" matter, and said he had written to the Speaker arguing the issue remains a live, contemporary one.
Referring to Assam's NRC exercise, Dr Bimol cited parliamentary responses indicating that roughly 35% of 1951 legacy records there were found lost or damaged, prompting authorities to accept electoral rolls as alternative documentation — a workaround he said created its own eligibility disputes. He argued Manipur, as a border state, has a distinct need for an NRC process but said little has moved on it despite three years since the population commission's creation.
Dr Bimol placed the debate in a longer political history, saying the legal groundwork for Assam's NRC — including the 1985 Assam Accord and the Section 6A citizenship amendment — was carried out under the Congress-led central government of the time, and that a 2003 amendment establishing a National Register of Indian Citizens had cross-party support. He contrasted this with a 2019 citizenship law amendment, which he said introduced religion-based distinctions into a previously religion-neutral framework. NE Dispatch has not independently verified Dr Bimol's characterization of this legislative history beyond the public parliamentary record.
Law and order: renewed Kuki-Naga violence
Dr Bimol also raised concerns over the state's law and order situation, saying NRC preparedness would be moot without a functioning administration on the ground. He referred to a resurgence of violence involving Kuki and Naga communities, drawing a comparison to unrest in 1991, and said two Kuki women were killed while collecting firewood in incidents he dated to around September, alongside reports of Naga homes being burned in the same period. NE Dispatch was unable to independently verify the specifics of either incident from the press conference alone.
Dr Bimol was critical of characterizations — including, he said, from the Union Home Ministry — of such violence as a dispute between the state's own communities rather than a law-and-order matter for which central and state security forces bear responsibility, citing the continued presence of army and central security force deployments in the state. He also cited the case of an individual identified only as "Bikram" as an example of what he described as unequal treatment of Manipur's residents under the law; this case could not be independently verified from the press conference.
