Manipur Assembly Polls 2022| 44 Ukhrul seat is set for a clash of the titans: former footballer takes on ex-bureaucrat and musician 

(From Left) NPF's Ramnganing Muivah, Congress' Alfred Kanngam Arthur and BJP's Somatai Shaiza have a tough fight in their hands. (Illustration Suneesh Kalarickal)

44 Ukhrul, an assembly seat reserved for scheduled tribes, in 1974 elected Yangmaso Shaiza, Manipur’s first tribal chief minister, and his wife Hangmila Shaiza, the state’s first woman legislator, in 1990.

 This time around, their nephew and former national football player Somatai Shaiza is testing his electoral fortunes for a third time from the hill constituency as a candidate of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Somatai’s cousin Danny Shaiza was the first Christian BJP legislator in all of India.   

 A former Churchill Brothers skipper, Somatai, who also played for Mohun Bagan and East Bengal and represented India twice in the Nehru Cup, lost the last election by just 296 votes as a candidate of the BJP. He contested in 2012 as a candidate of the Trinamool Congress. 

In a region obsessed with football, Somatai has a huge fan following. His down-to-earth personality resonates with the locals. The BJP has branded him as one of its star candidates from the sports sector.  

Promise of transformation 

Somatai promises the voters that he will transform Ukhrul into a sports powerhouse and modernise education, health and agriculture. In the first week of February, both his immediate Shaiza clan and the larger Hunphun (Ukhrul) village with about 13,000 voters resolved to unanimously support him in the upcoming election.

 He is one of only three contestants who cleared scrutiny to fight the March 5 election from 44 Ukhrul, a Tangkhul Naga majority constituency of 47,706 voters. Somatai’s rivals are a former bureaucrat fielded by the Naga People’s Front (NPF) and a musician fighting election on an Indian National Congress ticket. All three are from the Naga community in a constituency that also has about 5,000 voters of the Kuki ethnic group. 

 The BJP has gained popularity in Manipur, however a recent eviction notice given to nine churches in Imphal has created anxiety among the tribals, 97 percent of whom are Christians.

 When the initial polling dates for the upcoming elections included a Sunday, tribal groups including the All Tribal Students' Union Manipur protested and forced a change in the schedule. 

 Epicentre of Naga politics

 Ukhrul is an epicentre of Naga politics in Manipur. Several Naga leaders, including Thuingaleng Muivah, general secretary of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah), hail from Ukhrul district. After the NPF branched out into Manipur in May 2011, Ukhrul became one of the first four constituencies where it triumphed. 

The political ideals of this party dovetailed with the political aspirations of Naga constituents. 

A year before the NPF was launched, Muivah’s scheduled visit to his home town in May 2010 was stopped by the then Congress state government. That resulted in a local backlash against the party.  

The former NPF legislator of 44 Ukhrul, Samuel Risom, who now heads the party’s state campaign management committee, asserts that it was the solid support of the four party MLAs that enabled the BJP to form government in 2017. The  BJP, with only 21 MLAs, was invited to form government despite the Congress winning 28 seats in the 60-member assembly. 

 The NPF has fielded only 10 candidates this year. In 44 Ukhrul, it has replaced Samuel Risom, who lost the last election, with a former bureaucrat who joined the party only in October. 

 Bureaucrat-turned-politician  

 Former North East Council secretary Ramnganing Muivah  also known as Ram Muivah, is a postgraduate who joined the Indian Administrative Service  in 1985. He served as deputy commissioner of Ukhrul from 1990 to 1993 at the peak of Kuki-Naga clashes in the state and impressed the locals with his competence.  

 After retiring in 2020,  he joined the NPF in October 2021 and has been the most energetic campaigner among tribal candidates, using social media platforms and co-opting even the powerful apex Tangkhul tribe CSOs’ endorsement.  

 Unlike his two opponents, he does not belong to a political family and does not have the edge of a traditional vote bank. Known for being easily accessible to the people even in his years as a bureaucrat, he is giving his best shot in his electoral debut.

Interestingly, despite the Naga nationalism that the NPF espouses, he focuses more on the promise of developing the local infrastructure through a network of funding agencies. This seems to create a rift between him and hardcore NPF crusaders whose primary interest is in an honourable settlement of the Naga peace talks that goes beyond development packages.

 Two thirds of the people of the constituency live below the poverty line, and with this vision of improving the lives of common people, he is gaining more support each day especially among elders.

“He has absolute support of the minority Catholics of 44 Ukhrul," said an independent critic, Dr. Kharingpam.

Read also: Smaller parties could emerge kingmakers in Manipur polls

 For the love of music  

 The Tangkhuls are known for their love of music. Long before the internet boom, the population was already importing Western music cassettes, from country to heavy metal. Hindi was equated to the new Indian colonisers and considered alien.  

 So the stardom gained by the charismatic musician Alfred Kanngam Arthur was not surprising. He was the frontman of the popular band NH 39 (National Highway 39 now changed to AH1 is a 435-km road that starts from Assam across Nagaland and Manipur and merges into the Burma--now Myanmar -- Road).  He later joined Phoenix and performed across the country. 

As a newly elected Congress MLA, he upscaled the state Shirui Lily Festival and by hosting acclaimed international bands, made Ukhrul an international rock band concert destination.

Alfred Kanngam Arthur lost the election in 2012 by 70 votes when he first contested as a Congress candidate amid a boycott of the party by the Naga community and more severely in Ukhrul district.   

 In 2017, anti-Congress sentiments deepened following the creation of new districts on the eve of elections by the then ruling party Congress. He won by a slender margin of 296 votes amid violence and intimidation of various kinds. His father A.S. Arthur, a former bureaucrat, won on a Congress ticket in 1984 and 1995 and scored the second highest number of votes four times. 

In five years, Alfred Kanngam Arthur has won the support of the educated youngsters with the clarity with which he articulates his views on issues related to economic and social disparity within the state and limited space for the cultural survival of tribals. 

 Given his oratorial skills, legislative knowledge and excellent command over Hindi, English, Manipuri and Tangkhul, videos of his performance in the assembly and independent interviews have always been popular among the local tribals. 

 Alfred Kanngam Arthur’s sincere attempts to improve health and education have impressed the population and increased his popularity at the village level, especially among the poor. In his constituency, he created a model residential school and introduced pre-primary education in government schools for the first time in Manipur.  

 During the first and second waves of the pandemic, he was present on the ground and his work was rated the best among the 20 tribal MLAs. He has transformed the infrastructure of Pettigrew College, the only government college in Ukhrul district and improved its performance manifold. In sports, he revived the Shirui Lily Cup national-level football tournament after a decade of neglect. He transformed the annual Shirui Lily Festival, which provides an ideal platform for various young talents and which has tourists in record numbers. 

 Promoting tribal constitutional rights

 Despite being in the Opposition, as a lone constitutionalist, he has strongly advocated tribal rights consistently  inside the Assembly.

He was instrumental in drafting the Autonomous District Councils Bill 2021 that was unanimously adopted by members of the Hill Areas Committee on August 16, 2021, cutting across party lines and ethnic divides. The Bill aims at promoting equity and parity among the people of Manipur, by supporting the advancement of the hill population, which lives in ninety-one percent of the state’s total geographical area. He became the main spokesperson of the new Bill both inside and outside the state, and emerged as the most loved political icon especially for the young tribals of the state.

The government’s refusal to table the Bill has led to a new unity among the tribals of Manipur after two and half decades of absolute division following the Kuki-Naga clash in the early 90s. A rare achievement for a first-time politician Alfred Kanngam Arthur, to survive multi-layered friction among 34 diverse tribes and find a common platform for them to unite on.   

 Yet back in his constituency for the upcoming election, he has to contend with two political extremes. On the one hand there is the BJP-led government, whose anti-tribal position became clear when they failed to table the new HAC ADC Bill 2021. On the other hand, there is a whisper campaign trying to brand Congress as “anti-Naga”, it is being done more forcefully in this constituency than in the others. Also, the NPF’s manifesto had brought up Article371C but it was the sitting Congress MLA who consistently brought it up in the Assembly. The NPF could see this as  hijacking their poll plank, and see it as affecting their re-election chances.  The four sitting MLAs from NPF could lose the polls this time because of this. 

Efforts to intimidate several Congress unit presidents and their campaign has started in 44 AC Ukhrul. 

Despite these challenges, about ten thousand supporters from Alfred’s constituency showed up in his last public meeting held near Imphal last month to pledge their support.

A recent trend of political experimentation by both major national parties to appoint fresh faces as chief ministers to curb political corruption has sparked hope in Manipur. Instead of reappointing tested veterans armed with financial muscle, a radical shift of awarding the highest berths to freshers might improve the popularity of the political parties.

With such new possibilities, tribals who have not held the chief ministerial post for 25 years  are now placing their hope on the Congress candidate Alfred Kanngam Arthur.