Biren Singh says BJP colleagues plotted his ouster, asks why killings go on

Former Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh has accused a section of the BJP's state leadership of working with the Congress to force him out of office, and questioned why violence in Manipur has continued well after his resignation in February 2025.

Speaking to the news agency PTI in an interview published on Friday, Singh said the BJP government now led by Chief Minister Y Khemchand Singh must act quickly to regain the confidence of voters before the Assembly elections due early next year.

'Sections of state leaders conspired'

Singh made a clear distinction between the party's central leadership and its state unit. He said he was not blaming Delhi, but some state leaders who, in his words, had never accepted that a former Congress man became chief minister twice. He alleged that these MLAs treated the BJP as their own property and planned his resignation.

Khemchand, who was a minister in Singh's cabinet at the time, was among the senior leaders who had reportedly told the central leadership that the government could fall unless the chief minister was changed. Singh stepped down on February 9, 2025, amid dissent within the party and the threat of a no-confidence motion by the Congress.

'Now Biren is out. So what happened?'

Rejecting the charge that he had polarised the state, Singh pointed to the continuing violence involving Naga and Kuki communities since the present government took office in February this year. He asked how many Naga lives had been lost since his exit, and said the conflict had now become one of "Christians versus Christians". He also asked where the European Union had gone, a reference to the European Parliament's July 2023 resolution on the Manipur violence.

Advice to the government

Singh said he was worried that public unease could hurt the BJP in the coming elections. He said campaigns he had started against drugs and poppy cultivation were no longer visible, and that biometric identification of suspected illegal immigrants should continue. He added that people had heard nothing about that exercise for a year and a half, and that the government should tell the public what it was doing.

Despite the criticism, Singh said bringing the BJP back to power was the only way to secure Manipur's future, and hoped the central leadership would step in. Asked whether he could return as chief minister, he said there was strong public demand for it, but that such a decision depended on the party winning a majority. He said he regretted not completing his work because of disunity and infighting.

Background

Singh, a former footballer and journalist, became Manipur's first BJP chief minister in March 2017 and returned for a second term in 2022 after the party won a majority on its own. His government faced sustained criticism over its handling of the ethnic conflict that broke out in May 2023. The interview is the first time he has spoken publicly about the internal manoeuvring that preceded his resignation.