Kuki National Organisation slams Manipur MP Bimol Akoijam over remarks on PUCL report

Imphal: The Kuki National Organisation (KNO), an umbrella body of several Kuki armed groups under the Suspension of Operations (SoO) agreement with the Government of India, has strongly criticised Manipur’s Inner Manipur MP Bimol Akoijam for his remarks against the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) report on the two-year-long violence in the state.

KNO spokesperson Seilen Haokip said the PUCL tribunal, chaired by former Supreme Court judge Justice Kurian Joseph and comprising 14 members, was deliberately formed without local representation to ensure impartiality.

He said the report has been welcomed by the minority Kuki community as fair and just but was “predictably dismissed” by the MP representing the majority community, which he alleged has been widely acknowledged as the primary perpetrator of the violence.

The KNO accused Akoijam of echoing the language of valley-based militant groups such as Arambai Tenggol, Meitei Leepun and COCOMI, who have consistently opposed the SoO agreement.

Haokip said the MP’s claim that Kuki groups had received “crores of rupees” from the Centre was misleading, explaining that the only financial component of the SoO was a subsistence allowance of Rs 6,000 per month for each of the 2,000-odd cadres, often delayed for months or years. When arrears were released in lump sums, he said, the payments were misrepresented as large-scale funding.

The spokesperson recalled that the SoO was signed in 2008 to create space for dialogue within the framework of the Constitution. Until the outbreak of violence on May 3, 2023, the Kuki demand was limited to enhanced political autonomy through a Territorial Council within Manipur.

He alleged that the majority-led state government could not tolerate the idea of such autonomy and that the violence of May 3, which led to the mass displacement of Kukis from the valley, was premeditated. Following the events, the demand escalated to Separate Administration and later to Union Territory status under Article 239A.

Haokip maintained that the SoO brought relative peace and stability in the Kuki hills, enabling people to build homes, access bank loans and improve livelihoods. He said while Kuki groups remained committed to peace and dialogue, valley-based groups backed by the state government called for scrapping the agreement.

The KNO also questioned Akoijam’s silence on several issues, including the lack of arrests in rape and murder cases of Kuki women, delays in CBI and NIA investigations, the hardships of hill residents without proper healthcare access, and the violence unleashed by Arambai Tenggol in Imphal.

“The more Akoijam tries to dismiss the PUCL report with convoluted academic arguments, the more his bias becomes evident,” Haokip said, adding that efforts to discredit the report only exposed attempts to mask what he described as a “premeditated pogrom” against the Kuki people.