Elections 2022: Tiny hill town captures Manipur’s unusual poll scene

Nestled in the Sadar Hills and home to the Kuki tribe, Saikul in Kangpokpi district, is a nondescript place. However, ever since the Assembly elections were announced, the town, situated 30 km from state capital Imphal, has emerged as the scene of the quintessential ‘Manipur election’.

“So how do you like our dusty, old Saikul?” asks Goupu Chongloi, the block president of the Kuki Students’ Organisation (KSO), as he talks about his town. “It has nothing, right?…totally backward.”

Nestled in the Sadar Hills and home to the Kuki tribe, Saikul in Kangpokpi district, is a nondescript place. However, ever since the Assembly elections were announced, the town, situated 30 km from state capital Imphal, has emerged as the scene of the quintessential ‘Manipur election’.

Polls in Manipur are rarely shaped by political parties. Instead, what influences them is allegiances to clans and tribes, civil society organisations and, as many believe, even the ‘underground’, a euphemism for the state’s several militant groups. Then there’s the perennial hill-valley divide and, of course, the abundance of defecting candidates. Tiny Saikul captures it all.

In the first phase of polls on February 28, besides Yamthong Haokip, a two-time MLA on NIA radar, in the fray are his feisty daughter, the father of the state’s police chief and the wife of the self-styled chief of the outlawed Kuki Revolutionary Army (KRA).

This article was originally published in The Indian Express in February 2022. Full article here.