Nongthombam Biren Singh is a man of many talents. An avid footballer since his college days, Biren got recruited into the Border Security Force (BSF), where he used his feet skills to win the Durand Cup in 1981.
Singh is also passionate about words. After quitting the BSF, he tried his hand at his first love, journalism. Without any formal training, Singh started ‘Naharolgi Thoudang,’ a vernacular daily newspaper in 1992 and served as its editor till 2001.
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The dodging and tackling of football as well as the pitfalls and highs of heading a newspaper are good skills to have, especially if you have the minefield of politics in your sight. For the 61-year-old Biren, they must have come in handy at some point, as he rose to become the chief minister of Manipur, with his first eventful term having its share of controversies and rebellions.
The beginning
The year 2002 was crucial in Biren’s life. The government slapped a sedition charge on Singh for writing an article, which it felt was in favour of insurgents. In that very year, Biren contested from the Heingang Assembly Constituency as Democratic Revolutionary People’s Party candidate and won. He hasn’t looked back since.
Next year, he joined the Congress, then the strongest political party in Manipur, and became a minister under Okram Ibobi Singh, who served as CM for 15 years till 2017. Biren subsequently not only retained his Heingang Assembly seat but also emerged as an important leader who helped the Congress win the election for the third term in 2012.
The rise
As his clout in the party grew, Biren’s differences with Ibobi came out in the open. The Ibobi Singh government faced a lot of flak due to frequent attacks by militants, blockades (sometimes lasting months) by various ethnic groups, both in the Hindu Meitei-dominated Valley and the hills where Christian tribals call the shots.
The 2017 Assembly elections were inching closer and the Congress’ prospects looked uncertain. In 2016, when many sidelined Congress leaders joined the BJP, mainly due to the Narendra Modi wave that had swept the country two years earlier, Biren thought it was time for a switch and jumped ship to the saffron party.
It paid off for him. In the 2017 Assembly elections, the BJP won 21 seats in the 60-member Assembly and the ruling Congress emerged as the single largest party with 28 seats.
With both the parties jockeying for power, Biren, the ex-footballer and journalist, convinced the Naga People’s Front (NPF) and National People’s Party (NPP), which won four seats each, to come on board to help the BJP make history and form its first government in Manipur.
A few Congress MLAs too joined him and Biren became the chief minister.
“His capacity to win the trust of the Christian MLAs in the Naga dominated constituencies on the hills made all the difference. This is where Congress leaders including Ibobi Singh fell short,” a former journalist friend of Biren in Imphal told DH.
“It is because of his capacity to reach out to all sections of the people including the insurgent groups that Manipur has not witnessed many insurgency-related incidents in the past five years. There was also no blockade in the state during his tenure,” he said.
The controversy
Biren’s tenure since 2017, however, has not been smooth. In June 2020, nine MLAs including all four of the NPP quit the coalition government, questioning Biren’s style of functioning. The disgruntled MLAs were, however, taken to Delhi and convinced by BJP’s strongman in the Northeast Himanta Biswa Sarma and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
Biren was embroiled in a controversy in July 2020 when a woman police officer filed an affidavit in Manipur High Court alleging that he was pressuring her to drop a case against a person accused of illegal drug trade.
Then there is the crackdown on some journalists. Despite being a former editor, Biren sent Kishorechandra Wangkhem to jail twice for criticising him and the BJP.
With insurgency remaining in control since 2017, the BJP is once again projecting Biren as its CM face for the Assembly elections scheduled on February 27 and March 3.
“Manipur has seen stability and development during BJP’s tenure under Biren Singh. People of Manipur will give him another chance to take up more development work,” Amit Shah said while virtually launching several projects on January 6.
The recent militant attack in Churachandpur district on November 13, in which seven persons were killed, has become a talking point and provided some ammunition for the Congress. Biren is also facing simmering discontent in his own party.
It remains to be seen whether he can dodge rivals within and outside and emerge as the winner in the upcoming polls.