Imphal, May 13: Thokchom Meinya Singh of the Congress beat nearest rival Moirangthem Nara Singh of the CPI, a partner in the ruling coalition of Manipur, with a huge margin to bag the Inner seat. Counting for the Outer will be held on May 19. Immediately after his election, which saw the sitting Lok Sabha MP Thounaojam Chaoba Singh of BJP relegated to a poor fourth, Meinya Singh said Manipur’s territorial integrity would top his agenda as a parliamentarian. “I will not compromise on the issue of Manipur’s territorial integrity,” he told a party celebration at the state headquarters, Congress Bhavan, here.
Meinya Singh, who is the higher and technical education minister in the Okram Ibobi Singh ministry, polled 1,54,019 votes while Nara Singh, the arts and culture minister, polled 1,04,721 votes. State BJP president and sitting Lok Sabha MP Thounaojam Chaoba Singh finished a poor fourth.
The cracks in the ruling coalition were evident when the CPI leader accused the Congress of resorting to electoral malpractice to win the seat. “We won the moral victory and it is only the CPI that did not commit malpractice,” Nara Singh said.
The celebration at the Congress headquarters was somewhat subdued in view of the threat from the banned Revolutionary Peoples Front (RPF). The party flag at the head office was not found flying.
General secretary Meerabai Devi, however, explained that the flag was pulled down because of rain.
Before the elections, cadres of the RPF, which accused the Ibobi Singh government of turning a blind eye to atrocities by security forces, had collected Congress flags from the party office and burnt them.
However, a beaming Ibobi Singh, who is also the Pradesh Congress Committee chief, heaped praises on the voters for electing the party candidate during a reception of Meinya Singh at the Congress Bhavan. He said the election of his party’s candidate with a massive margin only proved that people of Manipur would not “succumb to threats” and they had reposed their faith in the Constitution.
Rajya Sabha MP and state Congress campaign committee chief Rishang Keishing described the party’s victory as a “triumph of secularism.”
Fifty-nine-year-old Meinya Singh, elected for the first time to the state Assembly on a ticket of the Democratic Revolutionary People’s Party (DRPP) in the 2002 elections, joined the Congress a few months later and became a Cabinet minister. Before joining active politics, he used to teach mathematics in a local college.
The Congress leader, who was garlanded by party colleagues and ministers at the reception, said besides the issue of territorial integrity, his other areas of concern would be solving the militancy problem through peaceful means.
He promised to work for initiating peace dialogues between the Centre and the several militant groups in the state. “The issue of human rights violations in the state by security forces will also be one other important item on the agenda,” he said.