Imphal, July 17: Former Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh has extended strong support to Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s recent crackdown on encroachers, drawing parallels with his own experiences in Manipur. Singh, who resigned from office in February amid ongoing ethnic unrest, accused sections of government officials in both states of facilitating illegal settlements on forest land.
Taking to social media platform X, Singh lauded Sarma for exposing a senior forest officer in Assam who allegedly enabled the encroachment of over 5,000 acres of forest land by Bangladeshi illegal immigrants.
The remarks came a day after Sarma, in a press conference in Guwahati, accused a former state officer—now a lawyer representing the evicted settlers—of facilitating illegal occupation of forest land.
Referring to his own tenure, Singh said that Manipur had faced similar problems, with illegal recognition of villages within protected forest areas. “Manipur faced the exact same issue. As many as 31 villages were illegally recognised within a Protected Forest area in Churachandpur by an SDC in 1988,” he said.
He further highlighted that in 2008, five villages were unlawfully recognised in Moreh by Commissioner PC Lawmkunga and the Small Town Committee, which was later dissolved. According to Singh, such actions not only violated administrative norms but also laid the groundwork for today’s ethnic and territorial conflicts in Manipur.
He emphasized that only the revenue department has the authority to create or alter administrative boundaries such as districts, subdivisions, tehsils, and villages. “Violating these rules, officials of the Forest Department, SDCs, and SDOs were giving recognition to villages. These illegal and misuse of power sowed the seeds of the crisis in Manipur,” Singh said.
