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Journalism of Courage
Last Thursday, Union Minister Rajkumar Ranjan Singh’s house was torched in Imphal by a mob, hours after a similar incident at the residence of a state cabinet minister. Amid raging violence between the Kuki and Meitei communities in Manipur, there has been a series of attacks on private residences and official quarters of elected representatives.
The Minister of State (MoS) for External Affairs and Education, Singh is the BJP MP from the Inner Manipur Lok Sabha constituency.
Thursday night’s attack was the second one targeting Singh’s residence, located in Kongba in Imphal East district, since violence erupted in Manipur on May 3. The first took place on May 25 night when a mob tried to storm the residence while he was inside. While nobody from his family has been living in the house since that incident, two security vehicles and a private vehicle were charred in Thursday arson following which Singh called the law and order situation in Manipur a “total failure” and that the N Biren Singh-led state government had failed to maintain it.
Saying “he did not expect such an attitude from his fellow citizens of state,” Singh told ANI: “The law and order condition in the state of Manipur is totally a failure. The existing government could not maintain this despite the Central government sending a lot of protection and Rapid Action Force (RAF).”
Singh has had a long career in academia before stepping into politics. He graduated with an Honours degree from Dhanamanjury College, Imphal under the Gauhati University in 1970. He completed his postgraduation in Geography from the Gauhati University in 1972.
After finishing his PhD in Geography from the Gauhati University, Singh took his first job as a lecturer at Ideal Girls’ College in 1973 and served there up to 1984. During 1984-2012, he was a professor at the Department of Earth Sciences in Manipur University. He also served as the registrar of the university from 2004 to 2008.
Singh joined the BJP in 2013. He contested the 2014 Lok Sabha election from the Inner Manipur constituency on the saffron party’s ticket, but could not win. He however won the seat as the BJP’s candidate in the 2019 parliamentary election, becoming one of the two Lok Sabha MPs from Manipur. He was inducted into the Narendra Modi ministry as the MoS for External affairs and Education in July 2021.
Singh has also served as the chairman of the BJP’s body on the state vision document as well as the party spokesperson.
A day after Singh’s house was set on fire in Imphal, attempts were made to torch the houses of Manipur BJP president A Sharda Devi and state cabinet minister Th Biswajit Singh on Friday night. Security forces, however, dispersed the mobs. A second wave of violence has been raging in Manipur since May 28, and while it has primarily been in the form of arson and shootings in border areas between the Kuki-dominated hills and the Meitei-dominated valley, there have been attempted attacks on the residences of elected representatives.
