SoO in Manipur: Beyond Partisan Blame and Political Convenience

The recent debate over the Suspension of Operations (SoO) agreement with Kuki armed groups has once again exposed the weakness of political discourse in Manipur. Instead of examining the agreement as a security instrument with serious legal, administrative, and political implications, much of the public argument has been reduced to partisan accusation. One side blames Delhi for appeasement. Another side presents the agreement as an unavoidable mechanism for peace. Both positions contain fragments of truth, but neither is sufficient to explain the complex reality.

The SoO is not an ordinary ceasefire. It is a tripartite arrangement involving the Government of India, the Government of Manipur, and armed groups under the Kuki National Organisation and the United People’s Front. Its purpose has been to suspend armed operations, confine cadres to designated camps, monitor weapons, and create space for political dialogue. In theory, such an agreement lowers violence. In practice, its credibility depends entirely on compliance, monitoring, and public trust. Manipur’s experience shows that these conditions have often remained weak.

In March 2023, the Manipur Cabinet under Chief Minister N. Biren Singh withdrew the State Government’s participation from the SoO agreements with the Kuki National Army and the Zomi Revolutionary Army, citing alleged violations and external leadership. This was not a minor administrative decision. It signalled that the elected state government believed the arrangement had become difficult to defend before the public, especially amid rising concerns over encroachment, extortion, illegal armed movement, and the growing perception that some armed groups were operating as parallel authorities.

The issue became sharper after the ethnic violence that erupted in May 2023. The breakdown of trust between Meitei and Kuki communities transformed every security decision into a political message. In such a climate, any continuation of SoO appeared to many in the valley as protection for armed actors. Among Kuki groups, the same arrangement was viewed as a shield against further escalation and as a channel for political negotiation. This dual reading remains central to understanding why the SoO question continues to divide Manipur.

On February 29, 2024, the Manipur Legislative Assembly passed a resolution urging the Government of India to abrogate the SoO agreement with Kuki militant groups. The resolution was significant because it reflected the position of the State Assembly at a time when the pact was expiring. At the same time, opposition or boycott by some Kuki MLAs revealed the political fracture already visible on the ground. The Assembly may have spoken formally as an institution, but Manipur’s social consensus had already broken down.

This is where simplistic blame becomes misleading. To say that only “BJP Delhi” reinstated the SoO to appease one side ignores the longer history of such agreements in the Northeast. The SoO framework did not begin with the present BJP government. Its roots go back to earlier security management practices, including the period when the Congress led governments at the Centre and in the State. Successive governments across party lines have used suspension of operations, ceasefire, designated camps, and political dialogue as tools to contain insurgency. Whether one agrees with this policy or not, it is part of India’s established conflict management method in the Northeast.

The more difficult question is not which party renewed the agreement. The real question is why India has repeatedly relied on temporary containment without building credible mechanisms for final settlement, accountability, and demilitarisation. This is the institutional failure at the heart of the SoO debate.

After N. Biren Singh resigned in February 2025, President’s Rule was imposed in Manipur. The renewal of the SoO in September 2025 took place during a period of central oversight and political transition. The revised agreement reportedly included stricter ground rules, renewed emphasis on Manipur’s territorial integrity, relocation of certain camps, and closer monitoring. These provisions were intended to address public criticism and reduce friction with civilian populations.

But stricter ground rules on paper cannot substitute for strict enforcement on the ground. For years, complaints have been raised about alleged violations of SoO ground rules. These include extortion, movement of armed cadres outside designated camps, involvement in intimidation, illegal taxation, and influence over civilian political mobilisation. Such allegations cannot be casually dismissed, because they directly affect public trust in the agreement. If armed groups under ceasefire are seen to retain coercive power over ordinary citizens, the ceasefire loses moral legitimacy.

The state government has an important role in this process. The SoO is tripartite in nature. Without state buy-in, implementation becomes hollow. The State knows the local terrain, village networks, policing requirements, district administration pressures, and community anxieties better than distant officials in Delhi. When the State Government withdraws support or the Assembly calls for abrogation, the Centre cannot treat such positions as mere local noise. They reflect the democratic and administrative concerns of the state.

At the same time, the state government cannot avoid responsibility by placing every burden on Delhi. Law and order, policing, intelligence coordination, relief management, and public communication require state-level seriousness. Manipur’s elected leaders have often spoken with intensity, but governance requires more than declarations. It requires documentation of violations, prosecution where evidence exists, transparent camp inspection, coordination with central forces, and public reporting that builds confidence. 

The tragedy of Manipur is that every institution is now viewed through an ethnic lens. Security forces are suspected by one side or the other. Civil society statements are read as community positions. Political decisions are interpreted as ethnic betrayal or ethnic protection. In such an atmosphere, even a technical revision of ground rules becomes a test of loyalty. That is a dangerous condition for any state.

Chief Minister Yumnam Khemchand Singh’s statement that the Suspension of Operations is not a state subject must be read carefully. It reflects the constitutional reality that the Centre has the decisive role in negotiating and maintaining such security arrangements. 

This marks a more restrained approach than that of former Chief Minister N. Biren Singh, whose government sought abrogation of the SoO with the KNA and ZRA. The contrast does not merely reveal a change in political tone. It exposes the deeper weakness of the tripartite arrangement, where the Centre controls the framework while the State bears much of the public anger, security pressure, and administrative burden.

Khemchand must learn from Biren’s experience in dealing with the SoO. Whatever one’s political assessment of the former Chief Minister, Biren understood that the State Government could not remain silent when the ground rules were allegedly violated and when public confidence in the agreement was collapsing. His demand for abrogation reflected the pressure of a state government facing the consequences of an agreement shaped largely by Delhi.

CM Khemchand may choose a more measured language, but he cannot afford administrative distance. If the SoO is to continue, he must insist on strict monitoring, transparent reporting, visible enforcement, and consequences for every violation. Otherwise, the State will once again be reduced to bearing responsibility without exercising authority.

The SoO debate must therefore be lifted from the level of partisan accusation to the level of institutional reform. First, the ground rules must be made meaningful. Every designated camp must be verified regularly by joint teams involving central and state agencies. Cadre strength, weapon inventories, movement restrictions, and camp locations must be monitored with seriousness. Violations should invite immediate and publicly known consequences. A ceasefire without penalty is not peace. It is administrative surrender.

Second, the agreement must not be allowed to create political ambiguity over Manipur’s territorial integrity. Any dialogue must remain within the constitutional framework and should not reward violence with territorial bargaining. At the same time, genuine grievances relating to governance, security, representation, and development must be addressed through institutional mechanisms. The answer to separatist sentiment is not denial alone. It is credible governance that reduces the appeal of separation.

Third, victims and displaced persons must be placed at the centre of public policy. The Manipur conflict has produced displacement, segregation, destroyed homes, disrupted education, and severe psychological damage. Whether the victim is Meitei, Kuki, Naga, or from any other community, the State must act with equal seriousness. Peace cannot be built only through talks with armed groups while ordinary citizens remain in relief camps and divided settlements.

Fourth, the Centre must stop treating containment as resolution. India’s Northeast has seen too many agreements that freeze conflict without solving it. Temporary peace is useful only when it prepares the ground for permanent settlement. If the SoO becomes an annual ritual of extension, resentment will grow. If abrogation becomes a slogan without planning, violence may return. Both approaches are inadequate.

Fifth, Manipur needs a wider political process among communities. The Meitei, Kuki, Naga, and other communities cannot be reduced to the positions of armed groups or pressure organisations. Community grievances must be heard, but armed coercion cannot be normalised. Civil society must recover its role as a bridge of dialogue, not merely as an amplifier of ethnic accusation.

The question before Manipur is not whether one Chief Minister opposed SoO and another government lived with its renewal. That is only the surface of the matter. N. Biren Singh’s resistance reflected a genuine state-level pushback against perceived violations. The later renewal reflected the Centre’s calculation that some form of controlled engagement was safer than complete rupture. Both decisions emerged from different pressures within the same conflict.

The public must therefore resist easy narratives. It is not honest to describe every renewal as appeasement. It is equally dishonest to describe every criticism of SoO as communal hostility. Many people in the valley fear that the agreement has allowed armed actors to consolidate influence. Many among Kuki communities fear that without such an arrangement, their security and political voice will be weakened. Both fears exist. The duty of government is not to exploit these fears, but to build a framework where neither community depends on armed groups for protection or political bargaining.

Manipur’s crisis did not begin with one agreement. It will not end with one resolution. The conflict is rooted in decades of hill-valley mistrust, land anxieties, demographic concerns, homeland claims, insurgency networks, weak administration, and competing memories of injustice. The SoO is only one instrument within this larger disorder. To treat it as the whole problem is to misunderstand Manipur. To ignore its failures is equally irresponsible.

The Centre must enforce its agreements. The State must document violations and govern without selective weakness. Armed groups must be held to every condition they sign. Civil society must stop reducing complex security questions into ethnic propaganda. Political parties must avoid using Manipur’s pain as a weapon against one another. The people, who have suffered the most, deserve more than narrative wars.

Manipur needs accountable governance, not slogans. It needs rule of law, not selective ceasefire. It needs political dialogue, but dialogue that respects the Constitution, territorial integrity, and equal citizenship. It needs security policy that protects civilians, not armed reputations. Above all, it needs a settlement that restores public trust.

The SoO question should not be used to score partisan points. It should force India and Manipur to ask a harder question: can peace be built without allowing armed groups to become permanent political brokers? 

Until that question is answered with courage and clarity, every renewal will invite suspicion, every abrogation demand will invite fear, and every government will inherit the same unresolved crisis under a different name.