Message clear, don’t take Manipur people for granted: JNU professor who won Inner Manipur seat for Congress

Bimol Akoijam, an associate professor of Jawaharlal Nehru University’s School of Social Sciences, won the Inner Manipur seat on a Congress ticket by a margin of over a lakh in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls.

This election was Akoijam’s electoral debut — he was one of the two Congress candidates who swept Manipur’s two parliamentary seats this election. According to Akoijam, he decided to join active politics following the outbreak of the ongoing ethnic conflict in the state.

In his interview with The Indian Express, he talks about how the conflict has impacted the election, what his priorities will be and what kind of equation he hopes to have with the BJP-led N. Biren Singh government in the state.

This is no rhetoric, it’s a fact — this is a win of the people of the state. The people of the state have spoken. It is a clear message that nobody likes lawlessness, misgovernance, and (that) it has gone too far. It is not my victory — it is a victory of the people of Manipur. And it is a clear message: “Don’t take Manipur for granted”.  You can’t take the people of the state for granted.

We had seen violence in the constituency you had contested in on polling day and you had alleged that Congress polling agents were being threatened. This doesn’t seem to have affected your performance.

If not for the violence and the malpractices, we would have won it by maybe 1.5 lakh or 2 lakh votes. From what we were tracking, it would definitely have been a minimum margin of 1.5 (lakh) if polling would have been conducted fairly.

In the parliamentary form of democracy, as far as public issues are concerned, we have to find commonalities. The fact (is) that a peaceful, lawful state is favourable for any party, (and) we will look for